


Dust to Dust

by Darkling_Day



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Chara and Frisk Share a Body, Chara is getting annoyed, Chara is messed up, Chara's a hypocrite, Depressed Sans, Everything is Different, Gen, Gender-Neutral Chara, Gender-Neutral Frisk, Human magicians, I hope you like spiders, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Minor Original Character(s), Napstablook is Bae, No Flowey...?, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sans Doesn't Remember Resets, Sans Remembers Resets, Sans is OP, Sans is bored, Tags May Change, Time Skips, Time Travel Shenanigans, but it makes sense eventually, but still knows about them, from the start, ghost sans, it seems like a contradiction, post-genocide, reset shenanigans, too many resets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2018-11-18 03:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11282673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkling_Day/pseuds/Darkling_Day
Summary: After countless Genocide runs, a world-weary Sans makes a desperate attempt to discover how the world keeps being put back together and is thrown into the days just after the Barrier is created. Trapped on the surface centuries before Frisk falls, he witnesses the tragic tale of events that leads to the First Child falling into the Underground.In the present, Frisk and Chara wake up expecting to make just another run through the Underground, only to discover a grinning Sans made of dust and a vastly different Underground then they remember.Perspectives swap between Sans and Frisk/Chara.





	1. An Ending

**Author's Note:**

> So, this started out as a simple "what if" that I thought of a while ago. It was sort of a throwaway comment at first, but it kept nagging at me to do something with it, so I started to flesh it out. But while I was putting together this world, it struck me just how improbable the concept was, seeing as it was kind of disproved in the game itself. So I got to thinking about what could possibly lead to this world being even remotely possible. Suffice to say, that thought-fuel turned into this thing that you are about to read.
> 
> The funny part about all this is, that original "what if" that started this whole thing? It's still important (and a spoiler), but it's not nearly as central to the plot as I originally thought it would be.
> 
> So now what I have to present to you is a confusing story about a skeleton who's kinda sick of dying. Enjoy.

Sudden wakefulness struck him as he heard the knife slicing through the air towards his body. His eyes snapped open and he dodged to the right, narrowly avoiding the blade. He shrugged at the small child in the striped sweater, winking and chuckling to himself. He said to his opponent, his friend on countless occasions and foe on even more, “Heh, didja really think you would be able-“

Slice. 9999999. His eyes widened in shock as the second, surprise blow cut through his coat, his shirt, his ribcage. The cut started to leak red liquid, and his mouth too. _that’s funny_ , he thought to himself. i didn’t think i was able to bleed. He looked down on his wound in silence, then back at the unfortunate child standing above him. When had he crumpled to the ground? He couldn’t remember. “So…” he began, his familiar grin still plastered to his face despite the overwhelming pain. _Well, I’m s’pposed to be feeling pain, anyway. Aren’t I_ , he thought. _Then why don’t I feel it?_ “Guess that’s it, huh? Just… don’t say I didn’t warn ya.” A moment of silence passed as he closed his eyes and forced himself to his feet. “Welp. I’m going to Grillby’s,” he said, marking the incredulity on the child’s face. He dragged himself to the side of the corridor, collapsing against a column, his wound still weeping that rich red fluid. “Papyrus, do you want anything?” Then, as silently as he had entered that final corridor, Sans crumbled into dust. And the fallen child looked at the remains of his once-great foe and smiled.

From there it was all the same old, worn-out pattern that the child had done for the last twenty times this had occurred. The stroll up to the throne room. Flowey’s attempt to warn Asgore. Asgore mistaking the child for some mysterious, powerful monster. Asgore’s death at Flowey’s hands. Flowey’s death at the child’s hands. And then nonexistence, absolute oblivion – for a time. It was this endless cycle: the child would fall into the Underground, impose their vision upon the world, murdering everyone or sparing all, then, when they inevitably became bored with either the best possible world or of the oblivion that they themselves perpetuated, they would RESET from the very beginning, starting the entire timeline over again and again.

One question had always bugged Sans about the cycle, back when he was alive: how was the world erased? It made no sense that this human child, even with the power to SAVE and RESET, could do anything of that proportion. Nor did it make sense that the timeline could just be restored at the drop of a hat, like it appeared to be on a regular basis. Rather, it appeared, to Sans’ eye, that the power to delete reality were only able to be used by some mysterious, external force. Who – or what – held this power was an interesting thing to theorize about, but to discover what actually controlled the fallen child on those genocidal occasions was the opportunity of a lifetime. And if whatever entity was responsible insisted on him having multiple lifetimes, then who was he to judge? Well, in this instance, at least.

The opportunity had already passed and the world already deleted by the time that the plan had come to fruition. All that was left was the dust of countless monsters, scattered across the empty void. How had that survived the end of reality? The swirling cloud of dust reforming in one corner of the abyss had no clue, but it was grateful nonetheless.

The tornado of dust was similar to one of those dust devils that sometimes plagued the surface, except that at its center was something that looked like a monster SOUL. The inverted pale heart appeared to have been shattered, but it was being pulled back together by some invisible force. Slowly, the cloud of dust consolidated into a small form, squat and round, draped in a well-sized and grease-stained blue hoodie. The form stretched its skeletal hands and looked down at its SOUL, which upon closer examination appeared to be slightly discolored. Indeed, it appeared to be slightly pink in the strange light of the void. The skeleton adopted a familiar smile and chuckled to itself. “well, it looks like i’m here, ‘in the flesh,’ after all this time.” It chuckled at its own pun, before realizing that there was nobody there to hear it. “Hello? Paps? Tori?” he called out into the empty void, his voice echoing as if a million echo flowers were repeating his every word. He bit his non-existent lip, then added, “Gaster?”

But nobody came.

His cries unanswered, he smiled weakly and sat down on whatever counted as the floor in the void. “What about you, kid?” Silence answered him, but there was a distinct change in the atmosphere of the void. “Heh. Not much for conversation, are ya? I know you’re somewhere around here. Why don’t you come on out so we can have a chat?” Nothing appeared, but Sans could tell something was paying attention to him now. Something familiar. “So you’re gonna be like that, huh. Well, that’s fine by me. I didn’t really expect to find myself here either. Just a last ditch effort to figure out what the hell had been going on.” He might as well have been speaking for his own benefit, for all the response he was getting. Still, he continued on. “Ya know, I don’t really get why you keep on destroying the world. We were all happy on the surface, so many times. Hell, remember that one time when we helped Burgerpants become an actor? or when you and Mettaton did that world tour? What about when we helped Papyrus learn to actually cook? Those were good times.” The quiet took on a strange air of… shame, as if filled with regret somehow, but Sans wasn’t going t stop now. He’d waited lifetimes for this. “Why did you not let those timelines last? Why kill everyone over and over again? Did it become boring to you to fix the world? Didja come to hate your friends over the course of countless lifetimes? What gave you the idea that genocide was a good idea?” Suddenly, a thought rose to the front of his mind. “What gave you the idea that it was even an option? Was it that damned weed, with that ‘kill or be killed’ bullshit? You rejected that every time, up until you started murdering everything. So what changed your mind?”

Silence.

“Fine, then. Be that way. I know you’re just going to bring reality back anyways. You do it every time, just so we can go through this whole thing again. But in the next timeline, don’t expect us to be-”

He heard himself be shushed and an invisible finger was placed over his mouth. _“Please, be quiet,”_ he heard the child’s oft-unused voice whisper from what seemed impossibly far away. _“They’re coming.”_ Sans wanted nothing more than to ask who was coming, but he heeded the voice. The invisible hand grabbed his skeletal one and directed him into a small pocket in the void, somewhere that he couldn’t be seen. That struck him as funny: a hiding place in a place with nowhere to hide. There, he peeked out into the darkness, just his eyes showing.

There, standing in the middle of the void, was a small, pale child with rosy cheeks, wearing a green-and-yellow striped shirt. There was something both familiar and off-putting about the child, with their shoulder-length brown hair and their strange smile. When they opened their mouth to speak, the voice that came out was soft and soothing and smooth, yet still somehow holding a touch of cruel malevolence. “So,” they said, smile on their face widening. “You want to go back. Again.” Sans had the feeling that this conversation had happened time and time again. “It’s beginning to be a little frustrating, having to come back again and again from my sweet oblivion. You realize that, don’t you? You said that you weren’t above consequences a long time ago. Then why do you keep wanting to return? W H Y  M U S T  I  K E E P  C O M I N G  B A C K?” The child’s face contorted, appearing hideous and terrifying in the pale light of oblivion. Sans recoiled a little from the sight, for the first time since the resets began genuinely terrified. “You have already given me the only thing that still has any value in this place. I can take nothing more from you. Or from anyone. We have killed everyone so many times and came to this sweet place of nonexistence so many times, yet still you are not content. You want to go back so badly? Fine. But this is the last time. Be content with your ‘happy ending’ for once: you are beginning to aggravate me..”

And with that, the child was gone. The void crumbled before Sans’ eye, but all remained dark. Until…

There he was, standing on a precipice, looking down into a deep and vast cavern that seemed to have no end, alongside two figures. The first was a long-haired human dressed in armor and a ragged cloak, holding an overly large sword. The second was hooded, obscured completely not unlike the old riverperson, but holding a scythe made of red magic, like Undyne’s spears. _Heh, sparring buddies, I guess,_ Sans thought while shrugging, though something about the human unnerved him. _Looks a little but like that kid in the void. Well, that’s humans for ya. They all look alike to me. Is that racist?_ Then he looked behind them.

There it was: the sky. A beautiful sunrise between a tall mountain – _not Ebott,_ he realized – and what appeared to be a small village. A valley between the two, filled with the sound of bluejays and other songbirds. The ground covered by patches of golden flowers, the kind Asgore loved. He almost cried for the beauty of it all: the surface, again, after all this time and all these deaths. He was finally getting his happy ending. “‘Scuse me, fellas, d’ya happen know the way to Monster Town?” he said, relying on Asgore’s naming genius to direct him home. “I’ve got somebody I’ve gotta see.” He grinned widely, feeling truly happy for the first time in a long while, but the didn’t answer. “Heya, can you hear me? I mean, I ain’t got ears myself, but I sure think you could lend me one.” His wide smile fading into a worried grin, he moved to shake one of the people in front of him out of whatever stupor they were in. He heard angry murmurings behind him, and turned to look yet again.

Something was wrong: he could see it now. A quick scan of the area revealed the countryside torn up, filled with gaping crevices and flame-filled holes. The town in the distance looked fine from a distance, but black smoke drifted lazily from all over the village, in excessive amounts. And directly behind the two figures standing on the ledge, on the floor of the valley below, was the assembled mass of humanity: dirty and unwashed, hungry faces screaming curses to the heavens and shouts of glee and bloodlust towards the two figures on the ledge.

The human with the sword stepped forth, sweeping their cloak behind them with a familiar flourish. The crowd fell silent. “Humans! People of the overworld, men, women, children! For three months, twelve days, and seven hours, we have fought against the demon horde, and emerged not only victorious, but with no losses!” The crowd cheered, losing their minds and their voices in the clamor. “These brutes… these fiends… they have tormented us since the dawn of time, threatening our homes, our lives, our hopes and dreams. Time and time again, they have taken up arms against our species, praying to take even a single soul, and time and time again, we have defeated them. But until now, this day, this very moment, they have still been a plague upon our lives and our wellbeing. WELL NO MORE!” Once again the crowd cheered, even more hysterically, if that was at all possible. The man turned to the hooded figure besides him and nodded. The figure with the hood then turned to the cavern, that deep, dark abyss that Sans was more and more beginning to suspect to be someplace horrible. He turned to peer down into the cavern behind them, hoping to make out something, anything to tell him that this wasn’t what he thought it was.

“It’s a beautiful day outside,” the hooded figure said. Sans stopped in his tracks. The voice was smooth and silky, like dark chocolate, and horrifyingly familiar. Quiet, yet the whole crowd could hear it. But the words that followed were what struck him most. “Birds are singing, flowers are blooming…” the figure went on, turning to face the cavern with that ethereal scythe grasped loosely in their hand. “On days like this…” Sans was repeating the words in his head, dreading the next words… “ _monsters_ like you…” that scythe was getting higher…

“S H O U L D  B E  B U R N I N G  I N  H E L L.”

The scythe dropped, and the world went black. Six figures, similarly dressed, appeared behind the scythe-bearer, holding in their hands human souls. One of each color, except red. The reaper brought forth their soul- DETERMINATION- and held it forth to the gap, that crevice to the place Underground. And then, in unison, the hooded figures, the magicians of humanity, chose to ACT: Seal.

Suddenly, light shone in the shadows cast by the setting sun and went out towards the crevice. Sans cried out, screaming, running towards the Barrier with no regard for his own life. But he was stopped short by the invisible field of energy that was supposed to let all enter, but none out.

And with that simple word that none but they and Sans would ever know, monsterkind was locked behind the Barrier, trapped in the Underground, until the whim of a human child would free them all again.

The rabble that constituted “humanity” cheered raucously, but Sans couldn’t hear them. He didn’t stir when the mass went away, or when the magicians disappeared into the wind, or when the warrior, lost in thought, spent the entire night staring at the Barrier in wonder. Sans could care less what the human thought. For all he cared, fire could consume the countryside, all of Mount Ebott, that mountain he sat upon right then, and the entire world. It didn’t matter to him. Reality had been taken away from him by the will of a cruel and depraved god, and when existence was returned and all he had hoped for could finally come true under the real sky, he was trapped. Not beneath the Barrier, like the other monsters, but on the other side of it. He didn’t understand the consequence of what he’d done, when he’d willed himself into existence in the void, and maybe he never would. Was he erased from the world, like Gaster or his followers, able to see and hear all that went on but unable to interact? It seemed that way. But unlike that forgotten scientist, he couldn’t see the people he had loved in life grow up and live as if he had never existed. Instead, he was trapped on the other side of a paper-thin, impenetrable Barrier that would likely never be undone in his lifetime.

He would never again know the joy of dozing off at one of his stations or selling contraband hot dogs to Vulkins and the kid. He could never again watch Alphys become flustered over simple questions, only to respond with a torrent when someone mentioned anime. He could never again share in one of Asgore’s tea parties, or watch the fuzzy pushover wander the Underground looking to make people’s days. Never again could he infuriate Undyne with simple logic or a bad pun and then dance mischievously away from her spears.

He would never hear Toriel’s gentle laughter at a bad pun again.

He would never see Papyrus again.

The thought was enough to make him want to give up on existing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's chapter one! At the time of this note, I've gotten about five chapters typed up, though they need a few more look-overs before they're fit for posting here. I'm aiming to post two of these a week, and I think I can deliver, but if I end up being too busy to write consistently, I'll fall back to one. I don't really think that's an issue, though, so I hope y'all enjoy!
> 
> To be clear, these first two chapters are the shortest I think I'll ever write for this, and they're probably the clunkiest, but I hope they're still an entertaining read.
> 
> My Sans is kinda an emotional wreck. I mean, he knows that he's lived through countless resets, died in several of them, failed to save the world and then had it brought back. How does he know all this if he doesn't remember the exact details of every reset? "Reports." And when he finally manages to "survive" the end of the world, he's trapped back in time, unable to ever see his friends again. Probably.
> 
> The Void part is kinda my headcanon. I mean, Chara only talks to you when you restart the game after the first Genocide run, but I like to think that they do that after every Genocide run. It's more fun this way.
> 
> Also, I handle true resets like they literally break down the world then recreate history from the ground up. That's a stretch of the imagination, I know, but it's kinda necessary for the story to progress. I mean, the exact nature of resets is never truly explained as far as I know. At least, not to this level of detail.
> 
> So, yeah. Vanilla Undertale Sans does science and ends up screwing himself over, though he does manage not to die. Good read.


	2. Fallen Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter! I promise that everything after this will be 3000+ words. But in the meantime, enjoy this thing! It's a weird POV, but I think it works pretty well, especially for character interactions.

Hey, wake up!

If we have to go through this old song-and-dance again, I wanna get it over with as quickly as possible.

No, not five more minutes! We don’t have time for this!

Okay, fine, we technically DO have all the time in the world. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to sit around and waste all of it!

Of COURSE it makes sense! I said it!

Fine! If you’re not going to get up and get this show on the road, I will!

You’re really forcing my hand here, Frisk!

Okay, here we go!

UP!

…

Why aren’t you getting up? I’m possessing your body!

Alright, let’s try that again! UP!

…

I don’t know why this is so difficult. I know you’re not resisting me, so why isn’t it WORKING?!?

Well, if possession isn’t going to work, FINE. Just keep lying on my grave.

What do you mean “my grave”? Mom buried me here! Don’t you see the flow-

…Frisk, where did the flowers go?

I’m sure they’re around here somewhere. They sprouted up all over after Asriel died. The screw up.

Don’t look so sad. You’re going to see him again at the end of this run. You ALWAYS do a pacifist run first to see him. And that… thing he is now is in the next room! Don’t you want to see “your very best friend?” What did he always call himself? “Flowey the Flower?” He must have inherited dad’s knack for naming.

NOW you’re getting up? Not possession, but FLOWEY? That’s really lame, don’t you-

…I know I already kinda asked this question, but where did the flower go?

Yes, it’s a true reset. It’s always a true reset after you take away sweet oblivion, you selfish little brat. Nobody remembers how we freaking MURDERED REALITY! AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND-

“I remember.”

…WHAT…WAS…THAT? Is that… Sans, you ask.

“ _In the flesh_. Well, you know what I mean. I know it’s probably only been instants for you, kids, but it had been eternity for me. I have been _dying_ to see you again.”

There he is, standing in the middle of the room, where Flowey should have been. Well, he’s not exactly himself, from the looks of it. I mean, everything’s in the right place and all- the hoodie, the slippers, the idiot grin plastered on his face- but… he seems to be made up of swirling dust. Just like that trash tornado in his room. I wonder…

“Nope. Totally unrelated. Good guess, tho.”

What are you doing here, you ask.

“Filling in for Flowey, I guess? _Tibia_ honest, I never liked the weed much anyway, but you know, I haven’t actually seen him around at all, so somebody’s gotta do his job. What’s with the shock? Not you, kid. I mean your little ‘buddy’ that likes destroying reality so much. Chara, right?" Sans shudders for a moment, but resumes his grin instantly. "Just because I don’t like to work doesn’t mean I don’t.”

You don’t mean _here_ here. You mean like, _at all_. Sans’ remarkable memory of the SAVEs and Resets doesn’t hold over True Resets, do they?

“Usually, yeah. Though not when you and the other one erase the world. that messes everything up. Well, it messed everything up. I used to have to piece it together, put pieces of reports filtering through holes in reality together and pray I’m right, but now? I remember EVERYTHING.”

You ask how. A simple question, but necessary.

“Same way we were able to talk in the void, kiddo. I’m not telling you yet, though. That would be spoilers. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this: I don’t quite think that the Underground is going to be the same as you left it. Responsible kids ought to take better care of their toys, especially when their ‘toys’ are everyone’s lives.”

“And if you expected to hear that ‘it’s kill or be killed’ drivel this run from that damnable weed, you’re welcome. You must be getting so _bone_ -tired of listening to that.”

Really, Sans?

“What? I’ve been here since the beginning of any history that mattered to anyone. My well of puns is _bone_ -dry at this point. alright, that was a bit of a stretch, but at least i’m keeping myself in shape. wouldn’t want to get too much meat on these bones.”

And with that insufferable torrent of bad puns, the Sans-nado lost its form and dissipated, leaving nothing behind but that small patch of grass that Flowey was supposed to fill with his smiling, murderous flower-form. I don’t know about you, but I kinda preferred the homicidal garden decoration to the smiley trashbag.

Did you hear how he talked to us? to ME? When we find him, I’m gonna make you kill him so hard he’ll remember it the next life over-

Wait. He was talking to you… and to ME. What. The. Actual. F-

Hey! I don’t know how that hurt, but it did! Stop that! Alright, alright, fine, I won’t curse. There? Happy?

But this is really serious. He knew about ME. About the times we erased reality and YOU wouldn’t let it stay dead, you sicko. He talked to both of us. He called me out by name. BY NAME. Even YOU didn’t do that until the second genocide run.

And the flowers. And Flowey. Asriel. Whatever you want to call him. It’s not important what his name is. Why isn’t he here?

And shouldn’t Toriel have shown up by now?

…I’m scared, Frisk.

What happened?

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

You stand at the back entrance pf the Ruins like you usually do, gazing up at the high, purple wall, covered in creepers and riddled with holes from age. Your hand moves forward to briefly touch the familiar SAVE star as you are filled with DETERMINATION in the shadow of the ancient home of monsterkind. If you die, you will come back here, to this place, to this moment, and redo it all. Only a select few individuals will even recognize that you reset, and fewer will know for certain what caused you to do so. It used to be between yourself, Sans, and Flowey when you died. And me, of course, but that is to be taken for granted, isn’t it?

Having saved, you advance up the stairs, careful as always not to slip. You’ve walked this flight more times than you can remember: why be so cautious? Nevertheless, you quickly step through the doorway into the Ruins proper, not quite knowing what to expect.

Oh yes! This puzzle! The one that Toriel always did for you! The door is… closed. I guess you have to solve this one for yourself.

…seriously? It’s so simple! AND you’ve seen that old goat do it thousands of time. Surely you remember the trick?

No? Here, let me have control for a-

Oh. Right.

The hint’s right there, on the wall. It’s actually a pretty nice puzzle, you know. Tricky, but not difficult to understand. I never really thought much about it when I was alive. Then again, the last time I passed through here in my own body was dead in Toriel’s arms, and the time before that, I was bleeding out all over Asriel’s shirt. Good times.

You go over to read the sign, careful to avoid the pressure plates. “Only the fearless may proceed. Brave ones, foolish ones. Both walk not the middle path,” it reads.

You have it now?

…Flowey’s right. You ARE an idiot.

Just step on the pressure plates that aren’t on the light floor! It’s that easy! C’mon! Just do it! I’m getting bored!

You finally do the pressure plate puzzle in an agonizingly slow fashion.

…I hate you.

We move on.

Ok, this one you HAVE to know. “Stay on the path.”

Toriel even has the switches LABELED, for Pete’s sake!

…wait. No she doesn’t.

What do you mean she’s not here? I can see that! Otherwise, she would be helping us and baking us pie and being all teary-eyed when we call her “mom” before we stab her heart out and shatter her SOUL. Or not. Depends on the run.

You mean she’s not in the Ruins? That’s a laughable thought. She has to be here. She’s ALWAYS here, every time. This is where she went when Asriel and I died and Asgore declared war on humanity. Where else could she be?

I know I raise a good point. I’m a smart demon-child.

You pull the switches, slightly uneasy but still determined to figure out what’s going on. Then, bracing yourself, you enter the next room.

There is a dummy here. Toriel would always tell you to practice talking to it.

It’s really quiet in here. It looks as if nobody’s been through here in a long while. The dummy itself looks kinda abandoned, the cloth material of its body tearing apart to reveal bits of stuffing. This room makes you sad.

You talk to the dummy. It doesn’t seem much for conversation.

You walk into the next room, imagining Toriel leading you onward by your hand.

This is the room with the spike trap that recedes as you walk across it. Do you remember it? It’s really easy, once you get the hang of it. There’s usually a Froggit in here, waiting to accost you. Instead, there’s a worthless, abandoned pile of dust spread across the ground. That’s one less distraction, I guess. At least we don’t have that standing in our way.

You fall to your knees and begin to tear up.

Stop it, you crybaby. You remind me of Asriel when you’re like this.

…

C’mon, we’ve got places to be. No use crying over spilled milk. It was just a Froggit. There, there. Shh. I got you, Frisk. I’m right here for you. You’re going to be alright. We’re going to be just fine. Everything is going to be ok.

Quickly you stop crying and push yourself to your feet, somehow instantly forgetting the sorrow you were in merely moments ago. Movements full of trepidation, you slowly cross the spike puzzle, the sharp metal points disappearing as you step on the trap in the correct locations. As you reach the other side, you are filled with the determination to continue, and step across the threshold into the next too-familiar chamber for what seems to be the millionth time.

Come, Frisk, let’s see what this world has to offer. Who knows? Maybe this one will be more entertaining than the last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it might be slightly unclear as to who's the narrator, but it is pretty obviously Chara. Surprise!
> 
> The POV is kinda different, but most of the text in the chapter is Chara's direct words, I think it works. The rooms should be easy enough to recognize for someone who has played through the game, but they're not entirely described in the work. Probably what cut the word count on this one down quite a bit, so I'm sorry about that. But when I get into the more... intensive chapters, it helps avoid some of the pointless clutter in otherwise great works.
> 
> I have some commentary of Chara and Frisk, but I'm saving it until the next chapter that has them in it. Until then, I'm just going to remind everyone that Chara no longer has their power to "posses" Frisk, though they're still technically sharing the same body.
> 
> Anyway, I'm actually kinda out-of-town right now, so it's a bit of a commitment to get this in, but I promise there will be a second chapter this week! See y'all then!


	3. Hopeless

The concept of time had lost its meaning. It might have been only hours since the barrier had fallen, or it might have been millennia, but Sans couldn’t tell. He just sat there at the edge of the mountainside, lying on his side, dwelling in his misery. “Why can’t I cross it?” he mumbled to himself, ignorant of any who might be nearby. Not that they would be able to hear him anyways: he was apparently invisible to the humans out here, and they were deaf to his words. “All the stories agree that it can be crossed from the outside, but I can’t get back in. Why?” He rolled onto his back, gazing up at a bright sky. A sky that he had seen many times, apparently, but only ever heard reports of from his past or future selves.

He had gathered that his spirit, his SOUL, had lingered on past the void when the child remade the world. And apparently, remaking the world meant putting history back together from the beginning, though he had apparently missed much of that before he had awoken on the eve of the Barrier’s creation. Poetic timing, that. He didn’t know if it were intentional or not.

But whether he was meant to wake up now or not, he was now a soul without a body, unable to construct one because of his weakness, but undying due to his ‘determination’ to keep on. He chuckled at that for no real reason. It wasn’t funny. He didn’t really want to keep living. Why not give up now?

A noise, to the side, barely audible. Laughter. He tilted his head to determine its source. How quaint: a couple of humans had come up here for some reason. Sans turned his head away: they didn’t matter to him. Nothing mattered to him, except getting back inside the Barrier. An impossible task since he had no power of his own.

He sighed, then continued to think on his predicament. The Barrier stood immobile, seemingly just blocking the cave entrance, but that didn’t matter: attempts to escape via the holes in the ceiling had ended in tragedy, and ghosts who attempted to merely go around the visible Barrier had reported an inability to progress. The human magicians had covered all their bases. So what else?

A sudden thought struck Sans. The humans had never said that one could pass from the outside of the Barrier in. The only evidence for that was the fallen humans, which _was_ pretty convincing proof for this argument. But what if only _humans_ could enter from the outside? There had to have been monsters caught on the outside of the Barrier who managed to avoid the final battle altogether, and at least some must have reached the Barrier in a desperate attempt to rejoin their kin. Yet there were no tales of outsiders ever coming through the Barrier. That had always been a hole in the logic behind that argument. Although the argument that the humans must have wiped out all the surviving surface-dwelling monsters was just as, if not more, plausible.

An even more hopeless thought struck Sans: what if he just lacked the power either way? He had no corporeal form and no means of interacting with anything at all. He wasn’t a even ghost monster: he couldn’t just posses a dummy or a robot or anything, and he didn’t even have something to show for his existence. He was just a disembodied consciousness at this point.

So he himself, Sans the skeleton, judge and scientist, the only being that had even a _chance_ of defeating the Determination-fueled god that had ruined any hopes and dreams he ever had, had no proof for his existence. It was enough to make him want to give up.

The humans had collapsed a short while away, holding each other tight and… crying? Well, good for them. At least they can _exist_. Sans, in strange, quiet desperation, pulled out his soul.

There it was: pale and delicate, like a snowflake. Sans’ soul had always been particularly weak, for reasons he had no desire to divulge to anyone. He could be killed in a single hit from even a Whimsun, and his attacks had always only ticked away one HP per hit. He had learned to cheat to account for that, dodging blows that other monsters would stand and take, using that mysterious Karma poison that made his attacks more dangerous than the average monster’s. It was all to account for this weakness. But his weakness would serve him well now, as he held out a nonexistent hand to his pale, discolored soul. He grabbed it in his left hand, considering for a moment.

Then he ground it into dust.

Sans felt the inverted heart shatter and felt pain wrack the body that he knew was not there. Pain, for no reason, shook his entire form as the world began to fade away in front of him. Even dying, he smiled with a face and mouth that was not really his.

As he felt himself slipping away, a thought came to his mind: what awaited him after death? Other monsters might go to the afterlife, a belief he did not hold himself (he thought that he might have received reports from it if it were true), but even if such a place existed, would it accommodate him now? He was a bodiless soul, an abomination, not quite a monster anymore but definitely not human. He was an aberration to the natural order. And if the afterlife was a lie as he suspected, what awaited him after this final death? Nothing? There was no human to save him this time, and no way out he could see. He had reached the end of his rope and had finally decided to cut himself loose. What was the point of keeping on?

_Just give up. I did._

He felt himself slipping away.

There was no reason to keep on existing.

He couldn’t even do anything that mattered, anyway.

The best he could hope for was to exist pointlessly for millennia until, hopefully, the kid released everyone from the Barrier and he would be able to watch his friends and family, unable to interact with them in any way. Until the kid reset, and Sans had the sneaking suspicion that he would be forced to survive the next reset, too. An eternity doomed to this existence.

It was almost enough to make him feel sorry for Gaster. Almost.

His thoughts kept drifting on to the thought of the afterlife. _I always thought that that was a somewhat flawed term. I mean, it works and all, but it feels more like an afterdeath to me. I have experienced life after life before, and trust me, it’s no paradise._ What awaited him? Eternal torment? Damnation?

The cold depths of oblivion?

Or would he just wake up in Snowdin again to relive the same day over and over and _over_ -

No. He felt so _warm_. His thoughts drifted lazily away from him, and he couldn’t muster up the strength to hold onto them. The only thing he could feel was that small ball of animal instinct he concealed deep within his heart. That little voice that he cold always trust to steer him right, but never listened to.

And right now, that voice was telling him that he didn’t want to die.

Because if he had actually wanted to die, he would have killed himself a long time ago.

Sans didn’t know what to think of this innermost part of his SOUL telling him that he was wrong. Normally, he would ignore the voice, but this time, it was not going to let itself go unheard. As the scattered pieces of his soul fell to the ground, Sans felt a will that he could not believe was his own refuse to let GO. He couldn’t die. He was too scared of what was going to happen afterwards. He didn’t- _I don’t want to die!_

The world disappeared. Everything went black. Sans was terrified to think that he was back in the void, back in oblivion with nothing but that demonic caricature of a child to keep him company. But that was not the case. Instead, he heard a familiar voice in his head.

_I still believe in you!_

…

He was sitting on that ridge overlooking the valley, lying on his side at the edge of the mountain, and he sat up. “What… just… happened?” he said out loud, the voice that only he could hear raspy with disuse. He was so confused. _Did I… do I still have enough DT to pull myself back together?_

Wait, that wasn’t it. He could tell because he heard the same noise that had startled him out of his despair momentarily- the sound of laughter. He stopped and turned to face the source. It was the same two humans from before, stumbling their way up the mountain and roaring with laughter. One was carrying the other on their back, like the piggyback rides that he had used to give Papyrus before the other skeleton had grown too large for such amusements. Sans couldn’t help but smile: for some reason, seeing other people happy had always made him happy. That was part of why he was so mad at the human – _heh, “the human” means nothing anymore. I’ve been around more humans than them. Can’t I just bring myself to say their name?_ – for taking away everyone’s happy ending time and time again.

Why had they done that, anyway? Were they dissatisfied? They had told him about Asriel a few times: were they trying to fix that whole messy scenario? Their plans to save the kid – _heh_ – had always failed spectacularly, usually resulting in yet another reset. But that wasn’t it. Murdering everyone never fixed the damned flower- he inevitably died too. So why?

_Focus, Sans._ He forced himself back to reality. That was part of his issue: he let his thoughts carry him away from reality too much. That’s part of why he didn’t manage to save Papyrus the first time: he was too caught up in the reports about the end of reality to notice when the… _event_ … occurred. The other part was complacency. The human had never before killed Papyrus like that- what did Sans have to fear from them?

A lot, apparently, if the cycle of resets was any indication. A thought popped into Sans’ head- which he promptly forced from his mind. He might not be able to interact with anything, but he sure wanted to pay attention to what was going on around him. Namely, the humans. While he was thinking, the humans had sat down on the ledge a short distance away, staring off at the rising sun. _Huh. I hadn’t noticed that before_. He moved his “body” closer to where the two sat, their arms wrapped around each other. He got the feeling he was intruding on a private moment, but at least he was in no fear of getting caught.

“…oh my god, _stop_! That’s not funny,” one of them said, laughing anyway. This one was wearing a green woolen dress and a ribbon in their hair. The ribbon was strangely familiar to Sans, though he could not quite place where he had seen it before. Maybe he had seen one like it on one of the occasions he came to the surface with the child. He had certainly been there often enough, according to past and future variations of himself, but he never remembered more than pieces in his dreams (and nightmares) or in the sudden flashes of deja vu that plagued him.

“Yes it is. At least a little,” the other said, grinning widely. This one was wearing a cream-colored coat and seemed to stand taller than their peer, even sitting down. “You’re smiling.”

“I am, and I hate it!” the first human said, pouting. There was still the twinkle of laughter in their eye, however. Sans couldn’t help but feel as if he had heard a similar conversation before. Though he supposed it was likely that, given enough years, things might repeat themselves. For some reason, he felt sad about that.

The one in the coat laughed and turned to their companion, putting their arm over their shoulder. Sans once again felt as though he was intruding. There was a silent moment, with nothing but the sound of the wind and singing birds to fill the quiet morning air. Sans looked down at the two humans, smiling a softer, sadder smile. He was told that in some lives he also found something like this, contentment and love. But that had never been a reality for him. Rather, all he had known was the strange monotony of the resets, followed by a sudden explosion of violence.

_The first time I fought the human, they couldn’t defeat me after two hundred seventy-three tries, so they gave up. The second time, it was nearly a hundred before they got me. After that, the number of tries just kept on shrinking. They didn’t die_ once _when I faced them this time around. What does that mean for the next-_

“So,” the human in the dress said suddenly, interrupting Sans’ train of thought. He supposed he was grateful for that. “I know the sunrise is beautiful and all, but we’ve seen it before. Why’d you drag me all the way up here this early?”

“No reason,” said the one in the coat. “I just wanted to look over the valley. It’s really peaceful this early, wouldn’t you say? No people, no soldiers, no _nothing_. Just natural beauty almost as far as the eye can see. It’s even blooming with those new golden flowers.”

“New? Those have been here for twenty years now. Ever since we were kids. Back when there were still monsters.” Sans’ blood froze, but the conversation continued, so he tried to not let it affect him too much.

“Well, I mean, relatively. Who knows how long this valley’s been here? Ever since the mountains rose, sure, but when was that? Nobody knows but the gods. But those flowers? They’re not from here. I heard the old monster king used to keep them in his garden.”

“Now you’re just pulling my leg. The old monster king was just that- a monster. A beast. There’s no way it would keep a garden.”

“Hey, I’m not saying it’s _true_ , just that I heard it. Anyway, that’s all done with now. That Barrier thing keeps them all locked away, right under our feet. And there’s no way they’re getting through that. Not even our magicians _now_ can do that. Not that they’ve tried, but you get my point.”

There was a brief pause, giving Sans the time to wrap his head around what he had just heard. _Even the humans can’t get in? Then how did they ever find that Chara kid? They shouldn’t have been able to get in, just like everyone else._ But before he could process much more than that, the human in the dress looked into their companion’s eyes and said, with a small, knowing smile on their lips, “Why are we actually up here? Not to talk about history, I hope.”

“You’ve caught me,” the other one said, nervously scratching their head. “I might have an ulterior motive.”

“What could it be? Maybe you wanted to get out of town to somewhere where we could be… alone…” they leaned in close, eyes closing and mouth readying for a kiss. Sans recoiled as he realized what he was about to watch, but the other human leaned away, looking strangely anxious.

“No! I- I mean, yes, but not for that! Not now, at least.” Sans was sure the last part of that thought was meant mostly for themselves. “No, actually, it’s a little more… serious than that. It’s not bad, or anything! Just not quite so lighthearted as usual. I’ve actually got a… question that I have to ask you.”

“Well, ask away,” the human in the dress said, obviously confused, but they still allowed themselves to be helped to their feet by their friend. The one in the coat was still obviously anxious, but they bit down their fear to continue on.

“Well… I don’t really know how I’m supposed to say this, but… here we go. You see, C – Caroline! – Caroline, I’ve known you all my life. We grew up together in this valley, playing among the flowers and the trees. Whenever I was having problems, you were there for me. When the war took me away, you waited for me. When I – I almost died, you did everything you could to save me. You have always been there, even when I didn’t deserve you in my life. _Especially_ then. We have been… seeing each other… like this for three years? Ever since we were old enough to choose for ourselves. And you know what? I think… I know I have told you this before, but I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with you. And there’s this one question that’s been burning in the back of my brain, even before we were together, and… and I… I can’t keep it contained any longer.” The human was trying so hard to keep going that they seemed to hardly notice when the tears appeared in their eyes. They were fidgeting with something in their coat pocket. The other human – _Caroline_ – seemed to finally understand what was going on and held their hands over their mouth in… joy? shock? Sans couldn’t tell. He only saw when the other human finally drew in a big breath and was filled with the resolve, the determination, to continue.

“You know what? Screw it. I’m tired of putting this off.” They dropped to one knee and pulled a box out of their pocket, opening it to reveal its contents to the other. Sans couldn’t quite make out what was in it, but he could hazard a guess.

“Caroline Pomony, will you marry me?”

Silence. There was no noise aside from the sound of birds and the wind. And… tears? Sans could hear crying as Caroline struggled to contain themselves. The other human, the one that was proposing – _do they have a name_ , Sans wondered – tilted their head to the side awkwardly. “If it’s the ring, I’m sorry. It’s all I could afford. I could return it and get a refund if you’d-“

“ _Yes,_ ” Caroline’s quiet, quivering voice interrupted, audible despite the birds and the wind. “Oh _gods_ , yes,” they said, much louder. Sans regretted getting as close as he had to listen in at that point. “Why didn’t you ask sooner, you idiot? I would’ve said yes ages ago.”

“Well, you see, I wasn’t quite sure of that, and I wanted it to be perfect – I know I messed it up, I’m sorry, I couldn’t get a fancy ring or anything, and I kinda stumbled over my speech, and it was rainy last night so there was mud and-”

“Des, I love you and all,” Caroline said, falling to their knees in front of the other human – _Des? That doesn’t sound like much of a name_ – “but please, shut up and hold me right now. I can barely keep it together.” That much was obvious from her voice, quivering as it was.

They fell into a tearful embrace, right there on the ledge overlooking the valley between Mount Ebott and Mount Imett. Sans backed away, dazed by what he had witnessed. Two humans who he did not know had climbed up to the ledge to see the sunrise and had become bound together for life. At least, they were going to be soon, if all went well. He could hardly believe it. That _was_ certainly an intimate moment to have witnessed.

When Des and Caroline finally stood up to make their way down the mountain (“Oh gods, we’re getting married! We’re actually getting married!), Sans decided to follow them. It wasn’t like he needed to be by the Barrier or anything- that would drive him to madness, being constantly near the very thing preventing his happiness. He instead thought that these mortals – _did I seriously just think of them as mortals? You arrogant bastard, you_ – might at the very least provide him with the very source of entertainment he needed to make it through the millennia before the kid finally came again. And then inevitably reset. Again and again. Until the end of the world rolled by again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's another Sans POV chapter. It was really hard to write this one, for some reason. I mean, the dialogue was easy enough, but Sans' thoughts and the part where he gives up on life... I must have rewritten the like five times.
> 
> I hope that the original characters aren't too terrible. They only really matter for one more chapter. Sans in the past has a lot of time skips, but he needed someone to get him off his boney butt and into the actual story. He's really not that great of a self-motivator, you know.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! See you in the next one!


	4. Master of Dust/Ghost Fight

This is a needlessly long corridor. You recognize it as the one that Toriel left you alone in that one time – countless times – to “test your independence.” How long ago that seems now: the last time you saw her, it was after you had killed her and shattered her soul. That had been so difficult the first time, but now it felt like a chore.

Hah. Remember the first time you came through here? You were so scared. Not at all hardened to the cruel realities of this world. Thought your new mom had abandoned you. Kinda like your old-

Ow, OW! Okay, okay, _fine_. That was a low blow, I’ll admit. But still. You don’t feel scared anymore. I do, of course. I’m only human. I just don’t scare that easily.

You know, we could probably have had this discussion while walking down this corridor. It’ll take long enough as it is. You nod and follow my advice.

Now, as I was saying, you remember the gray room and the… _thing_ in there? It might have been that “Gaster" fellow we heard about from the other gray monsters. To be honest, he kinda terrified me. I mean, something new. Something _dangerous_. Like, actually dangerous. Not like the Sans-nado or Asgore or anyone, but legitimately dangerous to us. He could erase us. No, I’m not just being paranoid, I mean legitimately. Nobody but the trashbag even seemed to remember the guy, and that smiling psychopath (the skeleton, not me) refused to tell us much. As I gather, he was erased from reality by… the Core, I think? I don’t really know.

You would have thought that Alphys at the very least would remember something like that, seeing as the guy used to be royal scientist and all, but she seemed oblivious abut it too. Plus, she’s a terrible liar. So the question remains: who is W.D. Gaste-

Hey! We were supposed to be walking and talking! Don’t tell me you forgot to walk. But you were walking, you protest uselessly. We aren’t any closer to the end of the corridor than we started. We aren’t on a treadmill this time, so what’s your excuse? C’mon, we’re going to get nowhere just standing here. You once again agree and begin to walk towards the end of the corridor.

But, seriously, who is Gaster? That’s one mystery that could have kept us occupied if you weren’t so insistent on repeating Genocide runs. Honestly, you were getting to be pretty cruel. I mean, you literally waited so Sans could watch you grind his brother’s body into dust under your feet multiple times. Or dragged Alphys to Waterfall to execute her in front of Undyne. That’s downright sadistic, if you ask the demon-child (which is me). Even I was fine with just one massive murder spree, then oblivion. OBLIVION. But YOU felt entitled to take away the death I desire, the death I NEED time and time again just so you can feel what it’s like to squeeze the life from their useless bodies over and over and over.

Y O U  M O N S T E R.

But then again, I have to admit that it was fun that first time, up until the end. And now. Right now is the most fun I’ve had in aeons. Only because I don’t know what’s going to come next. It’s exiting. It’s… addictive. Now I see why you used to not want to reset. Because the suspense is… exhilarating.

Though you don’t care about that anymore. What excites you? What makes you happy? I don’t think I’ve seen a real smile on your face except during Genocide runs.

Or when you talked to Asriel… after that first Pacifist run. Was that really you, though? Or was that just me?

Why are you so quiet? I can’t always read your mind, despite the fact that I should be able to. What is it about that- that traitor? Why do I still love him? What do you really feel about him?

And WHY THE FU-

Right, right, no cursing, but seriously. WHY HAVEN’T WE MOVED? This is the second time we’ve stayed in the exact same spot after I told you to move. So please, start walking. The joke got old fast kid.

Your protests go ignored as I attempt to force you to move forward, to no avail. God, I miss being able to posses the miserable sack of rotting meat you call a body.

I don’t understand why you’re so offended. Just because your heart is beating doesn’t mean you aren’t dead on the inside.

We walk down the corridor again, this time in silence. Well, it was in silence the first couple of times anyway, but now it is even devoid of _our_ little unheard conversations.

You stop proudly before the exit to the corridor, turning to pretend to face me in the way you do, only to realize that you are once again at the start of the corridor.

…okay, I’m not gonna blame you for it this time.

You hear a familiar voice chuckling in the corridor, but turning to find the source, you find that you are still alone in the corridor. “Heheh. The old ‘make them relive the same few minutes of their life over and over again’ trick. It’s always funny,” the voice remarks, dripping with sarcasm. Then, after a brief pause, it adds, “Oh wait.”

…what did you just say? Show yourself, trashbag!

“Wow, since you asked so politely,” Sans says, the voice now directly behind you. You jump and turn around to see once again the dust-Sans, swirling and this time, kinda… pinkish? Probably just a trick of the light. “Wow, what’s got you down, ghost-kid? Do you need something to lift your _spirits_?”

That’s not funny, you say. I prefer to think of myself as a demon, anyway.

“Well, that’s kinda a misnomer, isn’t it? Demons are supposed to go to hell, but you seem to have missed your ride. I’d be willing to help you get there, of course, but that didn’t work out the last time. Or the one before that. Or any of the times, now that I think about it.” Dust drifts on the air as he speaks. It’s become a little hard to breathe.

You ask Sans what he wants. He’s here for a reason, so spill it.

“Straight to the point, huh kid? I like that. But… I don’t really have a reason. I’m just… testing something. A theory that I’ve had for a long time now. And I’m right. That’s neat.”

…am I going to have to ask what theory this is?

“Nope. I’m gonna explain it to you right now. Though I don’t think you’ll like what I have to say, so I’ll instead ask you two a question: have you attempted to SAVE or reset since you’ve got here?” Dust fills the corridor, stinging your eyes and getting inside your mouth. It’s annoying.  
You wrack your mind, then slowly tell Sans yes, you did SAVE at a star a while back, but you haven’t had a reason to reset yet.

“Huh. So, how long ago did you SAVE, kid?”

When you first got here. Why?

“Would you mind using this SAVE star right here?” he says, pointing a faux-skeletal finger once again behind you. You spin around quickly to see the familiar golden glow of a SAVE star, one that you must have missed on the way in.

You’re going to make yourself dizzy if you keep spinning around like that.

Wait, there’s never been a SAVE star there. How-

Too late. You touch it with your hand, filled with Determination, then you SAVE. Suddenly, the corridor around you is no longer empty. The dust that has been gathering consolidates into distinct forms, those of strangely-shaped skulls floating in the air. They remind you a little of Gyftrot and… the DT machine. Sudden recognition flashes in your mind and you dive to avoid a pale gray beam of energy from one of the skulls’ mouths.

Too slow. The ray of pale light eats through your shirt and burns the skin of your side. The wound does not hurt too bad, until you realize that the purple Karma poison is eating away at your flesh. You scream in pain. You never had to endure this while your LOVE was still at one before. You cry out to Sans and ask him what he is doing, begging him to stop.

“Hey, relax, kiddo,” Sans says with a grin on his dusty skull. “It’ll only hurt for a moment. Think of it like… what did Asgore use to say? A visit to the dentist? Yeah, think of it like that.” Then the rest of the skulls open up and fire upon you.

You dodge a single beam. The rest consume your form in a flash of pale light. You feel complete agony, then nothing.

Darkness consumes you. Not unlike the darkness of the void, but somehow… warmer. As if it is filled by something. A familiar voice says words that we have memorized by heart from what seems to be a distance.

_You cannot give up just yet…_

_Chara! Stay determined…_

…

Suddenly, you are there again, spinning back around to face Sans and his array of blaster-skulls. “Well. The second part of the experiment appears to have been a success,” Sans says with a wide smile. “Thank you for your cooperation.

SANS. WHAT. THE. FUCK?!?

You do not stop me from cursing this time. You agree with the sentiment.

“You know how anything’s justified if your say it’s for science? Ends justify the means and all that shit? _That’s_ my excuse. Though I can’t admit it wasn’t fun.” He shrugs, ignoring you quivering in your impotent rage. If only you had more LOVE…

Hey, Frisk, let’s stay away from that line of thought right now. We’re kinda in the middle of something. We don’t need to be thinking with our knife right now

“Your friend’s right, whatever she means.” I gasp indignantly, but Sans waves it away. “Right. _They_. Sorry. I forgot you use that pronoun now.” He freezes up, his smile becoming a grimace before sliding lazily back across his face. “I’ve got some important news to fill you in on, kid: the whole timeline shenanigans you’ve been pulling stop _right now_.”

What is he talking about? We’re the ones in control of the timeline.

“No, not anymore. Remember the weed? He ruled the timeline until you showed your cute little face around here, kid, and he’s most definitely not you. Whoever has the most DETERMINATION is in charge of the timeline. And right now, that’d be me.”

WHAT.

“Well, yeah. It’s kinda a long story, but basically I now have sightly more Determination than you. The thing is, you and the king’s adopted brat might have all this Determination, but my stores of the stuff are pretty much brimming at the moment. Hell, I’ve got two SOULS worth in me right now, and you’ve barely got a little more than the damn flower on a good day.”

HOW.

“It was pretty easy, actually. No undue effort involved. I don’t really like doing too much work. And I also don’t like explanations. I’m not one for helping the kid that M U R D E R E D  M Y  B R O T H E R  F O R  F U N. So, you know, figure it out yourself.”

But… but… we… I…

“Look, kids, you had a good run being in charge of reality. Wait, no. That’s a lie. Thanks for reminding me,” he says to no one in particular. “You destroyed the timeline several times, heedless of the cost. You really need to learn that you aren’t above consequences.” Why do those words sound so familiar? “Because you’ve said them, kid.”

“This was a fun little experiment, but I’ve got to go for now. But hey, don’t worry: You can SAVE, and if you die, you’ll start over from the most recent SAVE. Even if you don’t want to. I want you to live out the rest of your natural life down here, unable to fix your mistakes with the snap of your fingers and a journey through time. I guess you’ll just have to live up to them.”

Sans and his blasters begin dissipating into dust once more, the component dust of their forms spreading out across the corridor. Before he leaves, Sans gives a wink and shrugs his shoulders, disappearing before your eyes.

…now you have to admit, that is at least a little terrifying.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

The rest of the Ruins are much the same as they have always been, aside from the shortage of monsters and a whole lot more cobwebs. The red leaves which are usually gathered in piles instead lay scattered about the entire floor, untended by the usual hands that rake them together. You ignore all this and head for the monster candy.

The usual bowl full of monster candy lacks its common sweet treats: instead it is filled with dust. You shudder to think where it might have come from (wait, no you don’t), but you decide to try and eat it anyway. Trying to choke it down is like eating dust… _literally_. Oh, well. You regain no HP from it. Not that you were missing any to begin with.

You leap across the broken floor tiles with abandon and continue on your way through the Ruins. This is the first rock “puzzle.” Too easy for you. You push to the pressure plate without much effort. And now the path across the cracked floor tiles stands in your way. Remember when you first tried this one? It took ages before you realized that the sign down beneath was a hint. Then you felt bad to step on the leaves up above. Now, you skip across it without even a second thought.

Now for the second rock “puzzle.” God, this will take forever. I mean, the rocks aren’t that heavy, but that last one sure is _annoying_. Are you seriously going to stand for it this time? There’s not much you can do, I know, but still. Do something about it for once. You push the first two rocks into their places and approach the final one with trepidation. Slowly, you reach out your arms to push.

It moves without protest across the smooth Ruins floor.

…huh.

You enter the room with the old cheese on the table. Boring. You SAVE quickly and continue on your way. The mouse does not squeak as you leave.

Aaaaaaand finally! A monster! Napstablook, even! We’re not alone down here!

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…” the ghost says out loud without even a hint of tiredness. They’re lying where they always do, in the middle of the path, pretending to sleep. Hey, here’s a thought: since they’re kinda incorporeal, why have we never tried just walking straight through them? “Zzzzzzzzzz… (Are they gone yet?) Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…” (This ghost keeps saying 'z' out loud repeatedly, pretending to sleep as usual. Hey, why’d I say that? You already know) Nevertheless, you walk up to the form of the prone ghost and make a show of trying to move them. It’s honestly just as sad as the first time you tried to move them, but you try nonetheless. You laugh in… pleasure? as you feel your SOUL drawn out of your body for the first real fight of the timeline.

Here comes Napstablook, same as always. What do you do?

You Check Napstablook. Seriously? This monster doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor… Did you really expect anything different?

“Oh, I’m REAL funny,” the ghost mumbles as they shed bullets in the shape of tears from their ghostly eyes. You attempt to dodge the bullets, but somehow you dodge straight into the main stream of tears flowing from Napstablook’s crying face. How is it that in every run, you never manage to dodge that first attack? You lose three HP.

Napstablook is wishing they weren’t here. You give Napstablook a patient smile. “Heh…” they say, not even bothering to attack this time. Honestly, this battle is so predictable. I’m as relieved to find somebody alive (dead? It’s hard to tell with ghosts) as you are, but this is kinda sad.

You tell Napstablook to ignore me and tell him a little joke. “Heh heh…” they laugh miserably, but they do sound a bit better. You once again fail to dodge their tears. God, it’s like clockwork. Now Napstablook wants to show you something.

“Let me try…” he says, summoning up his tears to instead create a little top hat on top of his head. “I call it ‘dapper blook.’ Do you like it…” he says, eagerly awaiting your response.

You nod vigorously and smile. “Oh gee…”

“I usually come to the Ruins because nobody’s around…” they say. “But today I met somebody nice.” They pause, still lying on the floor. You resist the urge to join them. “Oh, I’m rambling again. I’ll get out of you’re way.” And with that they begin to fade from sight.

No, wait WAIT! We’ve got so many questions for you! Napstablook stops fading, though you can still see through him.

“Oh… I didn’t know you wanted to talk to me… I’m bad at talking…” they mumble as their form returns to complete opacity. “But… you’ve been really nice to me…”

You ask Napstablook where everybody is.

“Oh… nobody lives in the Ruins but spiders anymore. It’s kinda common knowledge… All the monsters who used to live here moved out… or were made in pastries. That’s why I come here… nobody’s ever around…”

What? What about Toriel?

“Who? Oh… the old queen… she disappeared the same time as Asgore did… I don’t really know more than that… I wasn’t around back then… Papablook was still the owner of the farm…”

What do you mean she disappeared? Where did she go? TELL ME!!!

“You know…” Napstablook confides in you, “Your ghost friend is kinda a jerk… I can’t even see them…”

I’m not a ghost, you idiot, I’m a DEMON!

“Oh… sorry… I think I’d better go now…” They start to fade again.

No, please don’t leave, you beg. You apologize for my actions, but ask them to answer the question. It’s kinda important.

“Oh… ok… I didn’t know it meant so much to you… but I don’t know… you should probably ask Gerson… he probably knows… he lives right by me… if you ever want to come by… or if you don’t…”

You thank Napstablook and say that you’d hug him if you could. “Oh… please don’t… you wouldn’t want to… oh gee…” And then they disappear completely. Your smile fades too.

You know, you always said you liked Napstablook, but… you don’t really have the heart for that anymore, do you? You’re kinda like Flowey in that respect: you don’t feel compassion or kindness as far as I can tell.

So what do you feel?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This really should have been two chapters, but I'm not going to divvy them up. This is small enough as-is.
> 
> Sans is... well, he's actually really easy to write, for the most part. Except for puns. Puns suck. But, when you control both sides of the conversation, it becomes easier. The trick is to keep the conversation fluid and natural, which, I'll admit, isn't the easiest thing in the world.
> 
> Napstablook is bae. It's in the tags, but I'll say it again here. They're probably my favorite character in the whole game, aside from Papyrus, which is saying a lot, since the game is filled with fantastic characters. But anyway, my experience with Napstablook's battle is similar to how I write it here: I just can't dodge that attack where the tears hit the ground, then go around the box to fall down on you. I guess I haven't quite mastered that trick yet.
> 
> I'm only really going to use cursing in instances that deserve it. Like getting killed by Sans without warning. Wouldn't you curse after that?
> 
> See you next time!


	5. Waiting

Sans stumbled down the mountainside after the human couple, lost in thought. He was caught up in his miraculous recovery from his self-inflicted death. How had he survived? He hadn’t, that much he knew. No monster can survive without a soul. Well, except for the Amalgamates. And Flowey.

But he _did_ die. And then, when he cried out into the darkness, praying for survival in any possible fashion when he realized his mistake, he had opened his eyes to see what he had seen only minutes earlier. It was as if he had reloaded a SAVE.

…wait. He _had_ reloaded a SAVE, hadn’t he? That was the only conclusion he could come to that made any modicum of sense. The thought was vaguely disturbing for some reason. The only two… things he had ever known that possessed that power had both ended up being monsters in the worst sense of the word. He had confronted both after they murdered everyone in the Underground. One he had stopped. One he hadn’t. And the only shared trait between the two was…

Determination.

That made sense. It fueled SAVEs and resets and was so powerful that it could both destroy and create reality almost at will. But that power only fell to the most Determined being in existence, which would make him…

 _Best to think through this later_ , he thought. _I mean, I have about a thousand years, if I’m right about when I am, so why not wait? You’ve got something else to do for now_. He continued to follow the human couple, attempting to focus on their actions.

Which was admittedly pretty difficult, since they were doing nothing but walk hand-in-hand through Ebott Valley in silence. As the sun rose, the vale came to life: the trees were illuminated by the early morning light, revealing their autumnal red and gold leaves. Squirrels dashed from branch to branch, gathering up supplies for the inevitable winter. The occasional deer was visible traipsing through the forest on the way to wherever they were headed. Birds fluttered through the air, chirping and singing their songs without stop. And among all the noise and movement, there they were: patches of golden flowers, blooming without stop, ignorant of their inevitable demise as winter came once again or perhaps determined to survive the cold to come. Sans would have thought the whole sight beautiful if he didn’t imagine Flowey’s smiling face on every last flower.

After a long while, Caroline spoke up. “You know, the whole time you were proposing, I couldn’t help but feel as if it had happened before. Like, deja vu or something.” Sans froze in his tracks before realizing what she meant. That feeling after a SAVE is loaded or a reset performed, that everything that happens has happened before. Sans knew it too well. He had lived for too long burdened by that knowledge.

“Yeah, I felt it too. I think it was just because of how much I practiced in the mirror for that very moment,” Des replied casually, not quite understanding the import of their fiancé’s words.

Caroline shook her head. “No, it was… more than that. It was like I had lived through it before.”

“Like, in another life? Reincarnation and all that?”

“No, no, not like that! I don’t believe in that sort of thing anyway, no matter what the priests say,” Caroline said almost angrily, as if they couldn’t quite put words to what they wanted to say. “It was like… a half-remembered dream or something. That would make sense. I _have_ dreamed about that moment for a very long time.”

“So have I,” Des said, happily looking down at Caroline. They kissed their hair and threw their arm over their shoulder. “But I never quite reached the part where we tell everybody in my dreams. How do you want to handle that?” Suddenly, Des froze, and a look of… horror(?) crept across their face. “Oh, gods, we have to tell everyone! Your parents! They’re never going to approve or give me their blessing or anything!”

Caroline wrapped their arms around Des and started stroking their head slowly, trying to comfort them. “Hey, relax. Don’t worry about them. They don’t really care about me all that much. I’m a bit of a disappointment to them anyway.” With those last words, Sans could have sworn that anger flashed across their face, but it was gone before he could be sure.

“How can you say that? You’re still the daughter of the Red Wizard! That’s pretty freaking close to royalty!” They stopped, stunned at their own words. “Oh gods, I’m marrying a princess. Desmond Cook, the freaking orphan, peasant and common soldier in the most useless war ever, marrying a princess!”

“You know that’s not true,” Caroline said in a soothing tone, still stroking Desmond’s hair. “I’m not quite a princess. My father doesn’t care about the only one of his children that doesn’t have magic. He’s more concerned with maintaining the Barrier or… something. It’s like I’m not even his child.” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

As Sans was struck by the import of Caroline’s words ( _the Red Wizard? What?)_ , Desmond realized that they should probably be the one comforting their fiancé. “Hey, Caroline, he _does_ care. He’s just a little-“

“Could we please not talk about this right now?” Caroline interrupted, cutting off Desmond with her finger over their lips. “There’s so much happier things to be thinking about. Like the fact that we’re going to be married!” Her expression brightened visually as her mind turned away from her family. She released Desmond from her hold and continued down the road, leading them down the road by their hand.

Desmond raised their other hand in protest, but sighed and allowed themselves to be dragged down the road, swinging in back next to Caroline as she walked. “Yeah, good idea. Hmm… we need to get a priest, but that’s no issue, not really. What is a bit more of one is how we’re going to handle the ceremony and the guest list and-”

“Woah there, Des. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can plan later. For now, can I just bask in the amazingness of it all?” She released her hold on their arm and instead hooked her own arm around it, looking up into their face with sheer, unadulterated love.

A short silence followed, then Desmond replied, a smile slipping onto their face. “Sure, C. We can do that.”

Sans grinned. For some reason, he had come to like these humans. He knew in the back of his head that they were just like all the others of their species, horrible monsters worse than monsters themselves in many ways, but he was willing to let that slide for once. Plus, they were interesting enough to hold his attention for the meantime. He could figure out his own problems later.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

Desmond and Caroline were married inside the temple at Ebott Town ( _ok, who let Asgore name this place?_ ), six months after their engagement. It was a small affair: only family and close friends were invited. On Caroline’s side of the family, only her youngest brother, Quinton, attended, and he was forced to leave early to deal with family business. He profusely apologized, of course, but it was a matter of life and death, according to him. He wished them a happy life and a happy marriage, then disappeared in a stunt similar to Sans’ own teleportation. Seeing his old trick used by a human was upsetting, to say the least, but Sans tried to put a happy face on it. After all, it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.

As for Desmond’s side of the family… nobody came.

It was their friends that filled most of the temple, standing at attention as the ceremony commenced. The people who had helped Desmond survive in his early days as a street rat, those who had played alongside him in the village. Those who fought alongside him in the war that everyone seemed to regard as a waste of time and lives. Caroline’s friends were generally of the more refined sort: the lord’s daughter and her husband, her friends from her youth, other women from throughout the town who had been her friend while their men were all off to war. And a certain matronly woman who had once been her nurse.

Sans couldn’t help but think of his own friends when he saw Desmond and Caroline surrounded by the people who loved them. Undyne, Alphys, Asgore, Toriel, Papyrus. And a certain human child who he still couldn’t help but feel he could have been friends with if he had tried. They were not even born yet at this point, but they the closest thing he had had to a real family (aside from Papyrus, who _was_ his real family). He wondered if the humans felt the same way about their friends.

But almost before Sans could stop to think about what was going on, they were gone. Off on a “pilgrimage” to the Holy City, wherever that was. Apparently it was a thing that newlyweds did in human society, but Sans had never heard of it before. He guessed it was not nearly important enough to put in the reports to other variations of himself. Or maybe the tradition had died out long before the Barrier was ever broken. Which, considering when he was, made a lot of sense.

Sans stayed behind in Ebott Town while Desmond and Caroline were out traveling to the City. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to intrude on what they would be doing the whole way there, but he eventually admitted that he didn’t feel comfortable leaving the Barrier. Ebott Town was far enough away as it was, but at least it was in sight of the mountain. He didn’t want to get lost in the wide world and be unable to find his way back to Mount Ebott.

And while he was alone, he had the opportunity to learn more about his apparent ability to load SAVEs. The experience was painful, not only because he had to bring himself to the brink of death to load a SAVE, but also because he had no way to mark down notes or anything. He was relying on his memory alone, which, while it was pretty good, was still an imperfect storage unit. Nevertheless, he experimented on himself to learn the extent of his newfound power.

And even the boundaries of these abilities were… blurred. He was playing around with concepts, fantasy-proved-fact that allowed him to control the timeline. How was he to know what he could do or not? There might be aspects of his abilities that he _couldn’t_ understand. But what he did learn was simple: if he experienced death, he could bring himself back to the most recent SAVE (how he made the SAVEs was still beyond him. He would just visualize a golden star in his mind and _force_ … something to happen). He also had the distinct impression that he could reset, but he was too terrified to attempt that. When would he end up if he _did_ reset? The day the Barrier was created? In the Void? Or back in Snowdin, coming to sudden wakefulness at his guard post for the millionth time? He didn’t understand the mechanics of that himself, so he forced himself to avoid thinking about resetting and praying for the best.

Sans also observed the effects of his powers on the townsfolk. Like the citizens of the Underground, they would often express a familiarity or a sense of deja vu when Sans reloaded a SAVE. Sometimes, the clever ones would pick up on the deja vu and make different choices. A man who died in a hunting accident before Sans’ loaded a SAVE instead ducked his friend’s wayward arrow the next time around, citing a sudden feeling of danger as his reason. This seemed especially true of the children who played around Ebott: sometimes, when a game was recommended, one of the other kids would decline saying that “we’ve already played that one,” even if only Sans ever knew they had.

When he was not busy testing his abilities, Sans would laze around town and make terrible puns that no one but himself could hear. It was a rather sad existence, if he could say so himself, but at the very least it drove away the boredom. Sans had no need to eat or sleep, so what else was there for him to do? Dwell on what the kid had done to him? No- he had done _this_ to himself. The kid had only killed everyone more times than Sans could count. Actually, he could count the number of “Genocide scenarios”, as he had labeled them. He just couldn’t bring himself to.

When punning became boring, Sans took it upon himself to learn more about the townsfolk. They were decent folk, honest and hardworking, most of them. Many of the older men had fought in the War of Humans and Monsters, while the younger ones had fought in the various wars that took place afterwards, when humanity had no common threat to keep them from killing each other. They were all flawed individuals, but Sans had never met a person who wasn’t. Aside from Papyrus, of course. Papyrus was awesome.

While the common people were engaging enough, Sans also was interested about the lord of the town. He was kind and just, according to many, but also stubborn and rash. He had been the greatest hero of the War of Humans and Monsters, the one who had given that final speech to the masses of mankind as the wizards sealed away monsters for all of eternity. He had only a single child, a daughter who had married a knight from far away. Sans recognized them both from Desmond and Caroline’s wedding. Nice people, but paper-thin personalities. As far as Sans could tell from his first impressions of them, anyway. He was sure that they had a lot more depth to them than was immediately apparent. Of course, they barely left the castle except for special occasions, so Sans didn’t really see much of them while he was exploring the town.

Who he did see with more frequency was the Red Wizard’s youngest child. The older two seemed to be self-absorbed jerks, much too caught up in their own business to care about anyone else, but the youngest child, Quinton, seemed to be friends with almost everyone. He appeared without warning when least expected, such as at a small child’s home to perform magic tricks for their birthday or in the middle of the night at somebody’s house to stop a burglar. Sans tried to follow him as best as possible, but he found it difficult: Quinton used his ability to teleport frequently. But not so often to make it impossible to trail him, since he liked to walk through town and absorb his surroundings, hearing the sounds of home.

So Quinton Pomony became Sans’ primary means of escaping boredom and ignoring his own troubles and worries. He would go everywhere with the man, watching over him like some sort of powerless guardian angel. Not because of his general likable demeanor or his lazy smile, but because of his work. Sans had never before met a human magician, likely because they died out before the Barrier was ever destroyed, but he had heard rumors of their awesome power. And that incredible might… the power that could erect a limitless Barrier of pure energy… was used for the same sort of things that scientists in the Underground did.

It made sense. The Underground had never run on scientific knowledge or mundane machines alone, but on the blend of magic and technology that had been called magitech. Or mettatech, but only Mettaton and Papyrus had ever called it that anyway. _Papyrus…_

Magicians in the surface world were basically scientists: innovative experimenters playing around with ill-understood sources of energy in an attempt to make life better for everyone. At least, Quinton was. Sans didn’t know if the same was true for his two older siblings. Mara was working on creating arcane weaponry for the king, based off of what Sans had read – he felt shivers go down his spine when he saw that. It seemed too familiar – and Terrence was involved in the strange wizard-politics that seemed to occupy the upper class. Neither seemed especially savory individuals, but they were family. To Caroline and Quinton, at least. Sans could understand the importance of family, more than most people ever would. That’s what watching your brother die countless times would do to you.

Desmond and Caroline eventually returned from their pilgrimage after what seemed to be an eternity and returned to their daily lives, though this time as husband and wife. Desmond worked for a farmer for a while as a hired hand, then as a thatcher when he had the opportunity. He told Caroline that she wouldn’t have to work, that he could provide for the both of them, but she still took up a job as a scribe and accountant for a local lumber mill. Their lives were rough and they were poor, but they were happy. Eventually, they had a son who they named Alexander, then another they named James.

Years passed as Ebott Valley grew accustomed to the relative peace and quiet. Ebott Town was separate from the rest of the world, living in their own little bubble like the Underground did for a thousand years. Sans spent his time with Desmond and Caroline, watching them grow old together, but Quinton Pomony was the most interesting human he knew of. As Desmond had wrinkles and Caroline’s hair turned gray, Quinton remained the same as the day Sans first met him. His dark brown hair never lost its luster or thinned out, and his face stayed smooth. Sans understood that it wasn’t just a magician thing, but something Quinton had managed to do himself. For humans, immortality was the highest good, impossibly out of reach, but Quinton had attained it. How, he never said. He only told his sister that he was “determined to stay young” any way he could.

But as Quinton stayed the same, and the valley grew complacent, the world was suddenly wracked with troubles. News of war, famine, and suffering filtered into Ebott Valley with the lines of refugees fleeing other lands. The town overflowed with foreigners, causing the inhabitants to soon have problems of their own. Gone were the quiet, sleepy days that had once defined the valley, and tension and thoughts of war were always on the people’s mind.

For Quinton, there was more bad news than the general misery of the time. He had more pressing matters on his mind, such as the mysterious disappearance of the other magicians. Sans had read the letters over his shoulder: apparently, all but three of the original Seven Wizards had gone missing, and most of the newer generations as well. Quinton had been heartbroken to receive the news that his older brother was among the missing, but he refused to let it distract him. At least, that’s what he was trying to convince everyone else.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

It was a boring November day. Everything was in the process of dying: the trees, the grass, the flowers. Well, not the flowers. During all of his time on the surface, Sans had never seen the fabled golden flowers of Ebott stop blooming, even in the coldest winters. It was rather _chilling_ , if we was to say so himself. But he _cold_ understand why the flowers were so famous: they were beautiful, hardy, and they spread everywhere, especially where least expected. Sans had once seen them growing out of a mound of trash in the garbage dump underground. It was as if they had a mind of their own.

Of course, Sans had tangled with an intelligent flower in the past, so the thought of more of them was not a pleasant one.

Sans had been sitting on Quinton’s front porch for hours. There wasn’t much to do at night aside from stargaze, and after around fifty years of that Sans had grow tired of making up his own constellations. So he waited for Quinton to get up instead. Caroline and Desmond had just learned that they were going to be grandparents a few days before – or was it weeks? months? To Sans, all days had started to blur together and he hadn’t even been a century yet. Their children were nice, but they mostly lived the same uninteresting, boring lives that everyone else in the town lived. The times were progressing, but slowly. Too slow.

Sans was shaken out of his reverie by the sudden appearance of a hooded figure in front of him. He hadn’t seen them approach, but that might have just been because he was distracted. Or because the visitor was a wizard. Either way, something interesting was happening.

The robed person produced a scroll from a pouch on their side, which they deposited quite literally _in_ Sans before disappearing again before his eye-sockets. Well. It was a wizard after all. He wondered what they had so unceremoniously left _inside_ him. _A letter, probably? If they could teleport, why not just talk to Quinton in person? It’d be easier._ Remarking on the wizard’s strange behavior to himself, Sans absentmindedly removed the scroll from inside his incorporeal form and began to unseal it.

As he realized what his hands were doing, he sat there in astonishment, staring down at his hands holding the scroll. He was… _holding_ something. In his hands. For the first time in almost seventy years, he was interacting with a physical object. “Holy shit, I’m… tangible! I can touch things again!” he shouted to the sky, lifting his arms in triumph. He didn’t understand how he had done it, but for now, just being able to do it was victory enough.

 _Focus, Sans_ , he scolded himself internally, realizing he was still holding onto the scroll in both hands. He had to work fast, or Quinton might think something was up. He quickly unsealed the scroll and looked down at the contents, suddenly confused at what he was seeing. At first he stared down at the illegible scrawl of pictographs in dismay, but then the familiarity of the script struck him. He skimmed the message, hoping – praying – that he might be wrong. Stars… arrows… crosses… hands…

He was looking at the language of magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's this thing.
> 
> I rewrote that last part like three times, trying to get it right. I think I managed it in the end.
> 
> See you next time!


	6. Muffet

You know, at first I found spider pastries disgusting. I mean, they’re made of _spiders_ , for heaven’s sake. But over countless resets, coming here time and time again to purchase these pastries, tasting them in our mouth just about every time we encounter Muffet, you have really opened my eyes to the reality of the matter:

They are simply… _revolting_.

Honestly, if I had no other motives to destroy reality, these… _things_ you call pastries would be reason enough.

I don’t understand your tastes. Not even other _monsters_ can stomach the taste of this stuff. Hell, even _Sans_ threw up after eating the donut, and he eats Papyrus’s spaghetti on a regular basis. But somehow, you, the most _generic_ human I have ever met in my life (and subsequent death), _enjoy_ the texture of spiders crunching between your teeth as you’re drinking cider made of them.

… you’re disgusting on so many levels.

I’m just so freaking _happy_ that the spider bake sale wasn’t there this time. If there’s any good to come out of what happened to this world, it’s that.

Hey! Don’t pout! I would’ve had to taste the stuff too if you had got any.

Besides, how did you expect to _pay_ for a donut? We don’t have any cash. We haven’t fought anything that gives us any.

Yes, I know I raise a good point. I’m a genius.

Let’s move on. You can cry about not getting to eat those loathsome pastries later. For now, we’ve got to keep moving on.

The froggit room is unsettlingly still without the pale amphibians to fill the place. In their place is dust and cobwebs, not great stand-ins for the frog monsters. They can’t even offer us silly advice! Like, what the hell is a “full screen”? Why would I want that? What even is “F4”? How can you use it?

Hey, stop smiling! You don’t know what those are either, do you?

But seriously, what’s with all the dust? If I had a nose, I’d be sneezing like crazy right about now. Honestly, it’s a little creepy to see all this dust outside of a Genocide run, you know? Oh, right, I forgot. You don’t.

…

Let’s move on. The silence is making me uncomfortable.

Hey, this is the “revenge of the broken floor puzzle” room! Piece of cake. Just fall through the floor into the leaves. Let’s just grab the faded ribbon and be on our way!

You pick a cracked floor tile and jump onto it, shattering it beneath your feet as you fall slowly into the soft pile of leaves below. Wait… there’s no leaves there. What the- Well. You’ve fallen back-first into a giant spider web strung between the walls of the room, in which you are now trapped. That’s… unfortunate. But knowing how much you like spiders, I’m thinking you’re actually kinda enjoying this. Weirdo.

What? It’s true. You’re _really_ into spiders. Like, a creepy amount.

You strain your neck to turn and look at the floor of the room. Below where there would normally be a pile of red leaves waiting to cushion your fall is instead bare ground and dust. Definitely monster dust, this time. You can still see… _chunks_ … among the remains. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before

And buried beneath all the dust is… the faded ribbon, just out of reach.

Sudden vibrations shake the web and you cry out in surprise. You turn your head as best you can to see a multitude of small shapes crawling out of the corner of the room. Spiders. Hundreds of them, all approaching your helpless form in the web. You struggle to free yourself from the web, to no avail. You’re not so into spiders that you’d like to be eaten by them.

The spiders reach your body quickly, though it feels like an eternity. You attempt to brandish your stick threateningly, but your arm is stuck in the web. The arachnids surround you then, while you continue to struggle, sink their fangs into your body, your arms, your legs, your neck. You aren’t in pain, not really: the venom is numbing the feeling in your body. Your HP is dwindling as the spiders release their hold on you and begin to bind you in webbing. There’s no sudden death or merciful kill: you slowly suffer as you watch the spiders wrap your body up in a cocoon made of silk. Your red, radiant soul shatters in your chest as your vision fades to black. Game over. Just like that.

And then, that all-too familiar voice with those same words. I cannot help but mouth them as they are uttered.

_You cannot give up just yet…_

_Chara! Stay determined…_

…

You are there again, standing next to a table holding a piece of reeking, ancient cheese. It’s stuck to the table.

I am so, _so_ happy you decided to SAVE after the “fight” with Napstablook. I am so freaking happy that we don’t have to go through _that_ charade again. I mean, we technically have all the time in the world, but still. Not worth the effort.

That was an interesting death, to say the least. A lot like getting killed by Muffet, but less painful. If you hadn’t been struggling so much, I’d even say it was kinda relaxing. Well, aside from the spiders. If I had my own body, I’d shiver.

Hey, you okay? You usually aren’t like this after you die. At least, not anymore. You used to be so traumatized by this sort of thing, but after that first Genocide run, I thought you weren’t so bothered. Then again, I _did_ have your soul at the time. Maybe that had something to do with it.

…Still ignoring me, huh? Well, don’t you worry about me. I’m always here if you want to talk. I’m always here.

You stride down the halls of the Ruins solemnly, quiet even in the safety of your own head. We pass through the Froggit room and return to the puzzle room. Here, you tap out the floor above the correct hole with that stick you apparently drug down from the surface with you. You don’t see any spider webs, but you do notice the lack of a cushioning leaf pile to break your fall. That doesn’t mean that it’s safe to jump down. There’s gotta be another way to get down there or- 

Jesus Christ, that’s our leg! You freaking idiot! You just broke our leg! We don’t have any food or any way of regaining health and you just BROKE OUR LEG! How the hell are we supposed to get out of here now? How are we supposed to dodge attacks or anything? You doomed us!

…ok, I might have been overreacting a bit. We only lost 4 HP. It doesn’t hurt _that_ bad, right? You stand up painfully, leaning against the wall. You throw your entire weight against the lever that opens up the doorway and sigh when you hear the satisfying *click* of the lever snapping into place. Then you stumble up the stairs that lead back up to the main room. Your left leg feels as though it’s on fire as you limp through the halls of the Ruins. Changes in perspective matter little as you pass the traps without having to complete the puzzles: they’ve already all been answered. It’s not as though they’d have been much of an obstacle after the millionth time.

The Underground used to be terrifying and alien, but now? It’s just… repetitive. Until something different happens. I think we’re gonna have to thank Sans for that.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

The familiar grip of the toy knife feels… good in your hand. Not quite as good as a real knife would be, but this plastic replica will do for now. Grinning in anticipation, you turn from the balcony overlooking the sad remains of Home and limp down the path to Toriel’s house, abandoning the stick behind you.

Have you ever seen a weapon in the Underground other than these leftovers of other fallen children? Asgore’s trident and Undyne’s spears don’t count: those are pure magic, plain and simple. But don’t you find it odd that the only weapons down here are things that humans brought with them? This would be a place of peace if it weren’t for us killing everyone.

What? N-no, I’m not being sentimental! I’m just saying that the whole reason that _any_ of these monsters are dangerous is humanity screwing everything up for them. Everyone would be so much better off if I had never fallen down here.

Everyone would be so much happier if I were actually dead.

And instead the only peace that we can bring to them is that of the grave while we waste away in perfect oblivion, _where we belong_.

…and you didn’t pay attention to a word I said. Figures.

The branches of the perpetually dead tree in front of Toriel’s house are… dripping with cobwebs? Wow. When Napstablook said the Ruins belonged to the spiders, I didn’t think he meant like this. Still don’t have any leaves, though.

You shudder at the sight of webbing and fight an urge to burn the tree to the ground. You don’t even have any way to set it on fire, anyway. Maybe if you kidnapped Grillby…

This line of thinking is unhelpful.

You limp to the doorway of Toriel’s house and interact with the SAVE star, briefly filling yourself with Determination. Huh. You didn’t get your HP back. That’s odd. The beds of red leaves are untidy and strewn across the entire front of the house as opposed to their usual neatness. The doorway itself is shrouded in cobwebs. You’re going to have to climb through them to get inside. You brace yourself mentally and hurl yourself through the doorway, toy knife first.

Your first impression of the interior of Toriel’s house is… dark. The usually well-lit abode is now cast entirely in shadow. You assume all the lamps that Toriel usually has lit are all out now. You stumble blindly into the darkness, attempting to make your way about the house from memory. You choose to go right, towards your old room during all those times you stayed here.

You make your way alongside the all, feeling across it for the door. One roving hand accidentally nudges a light fixture, sending it crashing to the floor. Tense, you finally find the door to your room and make your way inside carefully.

After a minute of floundering in the darkness, you find a lamp and switch it on to reveal an untouched room. It looks exactly as it had when you had last left it. Uninteresting toys, a drawing of a flower, an empty photo frame. The only difference is the fact that the bin of shoes is completely empty. It strikes you that Asgore and Toriel must have only taken the bare essentially with them when they left for New Home, judging by how much is left in the room.

You look in the drawer for a flashlight, to no avail. Any light source would be better than nothing, but alas, you are unsuccessful. Maybe Toriel would have something of the sort in her room.

You leave your room and open the door, shedding light through the hallway. Now able to see much better, you enter Toriel’s room without much stumbling around in the hallway. It is dark in there, though. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Wait, you don’t get the reference? C’mon! It’s Zork! I can’t believe that I’m sharing the SOUL of such uncultured swine. I’ll tell you what: next time we get to the surface, we’re gonna find Zork online somewhere and we’re gonna play the shit out of it. I never really got to finish it myself, you know. Always got interrupted… It’ll be a good experience for the both of us.

You stumble around Toriel’s room for a solid three minutes before finding a lamp. The light fills the room instantaneously and reveals a familiar room, once again seemingly untouched. The only differences were the lack of Toriel’s pun-filled diary and the desiccated plants, dead and dry after being abandoned for who-knows-how-long.

You shake off the sense of perverted nostalgia and the memories of Toriel’s death to rummage through her desk. Luckily enough, you find a flashlight with a little battery power left and an ancient cellphone that reminds you more of a brick than a phone. Both will come in handy. You look through the contacts list and find only a single number without an associated name. You call the number, but there is no response. You are curious, but you shrug: another problem for another day.

You turn on the flashlight. The beam of light flickers weakly, but it still works. You go back into the hallway and turn to go back to the main room of the house when an interesting idea strikes your fancy. You walk to the end of the hallway and shine the light at the mirror, almost blinding yourself with your own flashlight. You gaze at your own reflection in wonder, like you have every time. It’s… you. Us. It’s us. Nodding to yourself, you walk back down the hallway.

The other half of the house is as dull and lifeless as the first half. Empty bookcases, dusty chairs, cold fireplace. A powerless fridge that still has a bar of old chocolate in it. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s still there.

The old house that Toriel used to live in is just… sad. Depressing. Devoid of life and light, there’s no point in staying up here. Time to descend that staircase. You wince in pain with every other step, your left leg still in pain. You walk through the empty corridors in silence. You can’t help but notice all the webs in the corners or near the ceiling and the dust covering the floor. It’s unnerving, even for a spider fanatic like yourself.

Ok, I get you just had a traumatic experience, but still, poking fun is allI have when I can’t possess you fully.

The hallway seems to last forever every time we walk through it. At first, it was because of Toriel and how often she stopped and how much she had to say. Now, it’s because of the unsettling atmosphere of the corridor. The unfamiliar darkness, the poor quality of you flashlight, and the frequency of the webs might have something to do with that.

After what seems to be an eternity, you reach the door end of the corridor. It’s… ajar, slightly open, as if someone had not closed it all the way. If not for the dim illumination provided by your flashlight, you don’t think you would be able to notice the strands of webbing strung across the doorway like a net set to trap unwary passerby. You suppose that’s kinda the point. Oh well. Only one way forward. Hesitating, you slice your way through the near-invisible strands of spider silk blocking your path with the too-dull toy knife. It takes minutes to cut through the tough webbing and you almost lose your knife in the process.

There you are, in the room where yo would usually meet Flowey for the second time. Totally dark except for the single ray of sunshine through a hole in the ceiling that reveals a plot of grass. The room seems empty, but something seems off.

You can hear faint laughter in the air.

“Ahuhuhuhu… did hear what they just said?” a familiar voice says. You swivel your head frantically to find its source, but to no avail.

“They said a human wearing a striped shirt will come through. I heard that they hate spiders.” You attempt to protest, but the voice just talks over you. “I heard that they love to stomp on them. I heard that they like to tear their legs off. I heard…”

“…that they taste like heaven.”

You look up, terror in your eyes.

Above you is a massive spider web, strung across the entirety of the room. Spider silk glitters in the light from above, glistening and glowing in ways that it never has before. Dust floats in the air around it, visible in the glow of a distant sun. The entire web is crawling with small spiders, moving to-and-fro and giving you the illusion that the entire web is shivering.

And in the center of the web, shattered teacups in her hands, sits Muffet, that shy, predatory smile plastered across her face.

Suddenly, you feel a yanking sensation in your chest. Your SOUL is drawn violently from your body as Muffet crooks her finger, and the rest of you floats up to follow it. You watch in terror as the ground is suddenly pulled from beneath you. You had never liked heights much. It had made it just that much harder to jump down here in the first place.

As you were drawn up to Muffet’s level, you noticed little details about her that you hadn’t noticed before. Her dress, which she had always kept in such great condition, was instead torn and ragged. Her pigtails were disordered and her hair overly long. But the smile on her face did not reach her five eyes, and instead appeared a bit manic in the gentle light from above. And that look of pure, unbridled _hunger_ on her face… I don’t think you’ve ever seen that before. It would be enough to terrify you if you weren’t already scared silly by her dragging you up into her web.

“Don’t look so _blue_ , my deary~,” she says, smiling “politely” in your face as strange, haunting music begins to play in the background. She hurls some liquid from a shattered teacup onto your SOUL. You try to dodge, put there is too much of it: it floods your field of view with a purple color. By the time your sight is returned to you, your SOUL had turned completely purple and is trapped on a strand of webbing. “…I think _purple_ is a much better look on you! Ahuhuhu~” she laughs, wrapping your body in silken strands of webbing as you struggle helplessly. Your knife hand is trapped at your side: you couldn’t move it to save your life. Which is unfortunate, because you might just need to do so.

“Why so pale?” she says in a soothing tone, silky and delicate. “You should be proud~” Smaller, spider-shaped bullets come from the sides of the web directly at your SOUL. You barely manage to hop it over to another strand as you struggle against the cocoon holding you. You feel the web straining to contain you as you free your left arm: the wrong arm, unfortunately. If only you could manage to free the other one. “Proud that you’re going to make every spider very happy~ Ahuhuhu~” You cry out to her to release you from the web.

“Let you go? Don’t be silly~” she purrs as the other spiders clap along to the mysterious music that has no source. You fight the urge to dance. “You’re the first meal that we’ve managed to catch in _years_ ~~” She hurls pieces of her shattered tea cups at your enraptured SOUL, but you dodge in the knick of time. You feel the web loosen around you as you fight it’s hold.

“The person that told us about you… they said they were just trying to help out. They had such a wide smile~ and… Ahuhuhu~” she chuckles, hurling more shards of glass and spider-shaped projectiles at you. One manages to score a glancing hit to your SOUL, and you scream in pain as you lose 6 HP. You now have half your health left. Better make it count. And try to dodge more next time. I feel the same pain as you do, ya know. A sympathetic wound opens up in your side, and red blood begins to stain your cocoon.

“It’s strange, but the moment I looked away, they… disappeared…?” a confused look graces her face for a moment, but then her predatory grin returns. Your struggles further loosen your cocoon, but you are still trapped in it. Your knife-hand it almost out… “And once we’ve had our fill… well, we can sell your SOUL to the highest bidder~ With that money, we could finally escape these damnable Ruins!” An elated smile slips across her face as she hurls more shattered glassware at your purple SOUL. “Haven’t you heard? Spiders have been trapped in the Ruins for generations! The new king had us moved here when he took power. Even if we go around the door, Snowdin’s fatal cold is impassable alone. But with the money we get from your SOUL, we’ll be able to rent a heated limo~ And with all the leftovers…? I could finally open my own pastry business~”

As Muffet monologues, her attacks slow down and you can devote all of your energy to escaping your cocoon. Finally, with a final heave, you manage to free your knife arm. You start hacking at the webs holding you with the toy weapon, slowly managing to free yourself from the web.

Muffet realizes what you are doing at once, but instead of being shocked or outraged, she just chuckles. “Oh, how rude of me! I almost forgot to introduce you to my pet~ It’s time for dinner, isn’t it? Have fun, you two~” Suddenly, a large, terrifying sound, akin to a roar but much more… high-pitched, reverberates throughout the room. You stop hacking at your bonds for a moment to look up. You immediately regret it.

Above you is Muffet’s monstrous “pet”, a giant, horrific muffin bearing some of the features or a spider, primarily the multi-eyed head and the eight legs, though all blown up in hideous proportion to the pastry-like body of the beast. It crawls down the web towards you slowly, as if cautiously, as Muffet throws even more spider-bullets and shattered teacups at you. You are fortunate to dodge all but a single spider, which drops you down to 4 HP. You gasp in pain as your eyelids become harder and harder to keep open, but you refuse to give in now. With a final heave, you manage to slice away the web cocoon suspending you in the air and grab at your SOUL in desperation as gravity begins to take effect. Luckily enough, you land well this time, only stumbling a little before you dash towards the door before you, your hurt leg aching with every step you take on it. Above you, Muffet gasps, but when you turn to look at her one last time, you see that her familiar expression is upon her face. The eyes of a patient predator burn through you as you manage to force open the Ruins doors to a blast of sudden cold air.

“Ahuhuhuhu… That was fun!” she says, her voice quivering in rage and hunger. “See you again, dearie!” And then the Ruins doors slam shut behind you, leaving you on the other side of an impassable door cold, hurt, and confused.

You take an unsteady step onto the path and gasp. Apparently adrenaline was the only thing keeping you going that entire fight. You look down at the snow in wonder. When had it snowed red in Snowdin? Was this a magic thing? Then you feel the rip in your shirt. You press a hand  to your side and then examine the blood on it, frowning. You’re not in pain, not really. All you want to do is lie down and… rest for a bit. Yeah. All you need to do is rest.

The last thing you see before your vision fades to black is a blur of movement and a flash of red…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you have it, folks! Frisk and Chara finally make it out of the spider-infested Ruins! That means there's about one more chapter left in this part of the story before Snowdin for real! And that next chapter will resolve the "Sans in the past" arc for a little while. Not forever, though. That's still a major part of the story. We haven't even reached Chara yet with him!
> 
> Why did I put the spiders in the Ruins? Well, you know, the spider clans were trapped in the Ruins, so why not move them all there? Plus, it allows me to do something... special with Toriel later. Don't worry, she will show up, but in the present, it will be a while.
> 
> I'm gonna be honest here for a moment: when I started writing this part of the story, I didn't like Muffet all that much. But as I read through her dialogue to get a feel for the character, and as I was looking for a good Spider Dance remix online (I ended up just listening to the original, I didn't look very hard), she sort of grew on me. Well, she more crawled on me and told me she'd bleed me dry (of cash) if I didn't do her justice. So, now I like Muffet. I hate Stockholm Syndrome.
> 
> Ok, this is getting a little long at this point, but do y'all have a good name for this AU? I mean, it's very much an AU at this point, so it needs a decent name. I was going to call it Dusttale, but there's already one of those (which is pretty fantastic btw, look it up). Soooooo I'm looking for suggestions!
> 
> Thank you for reading! See you next time!


	7. The Flaw

It had been three weeks since Sans had seen the letter written in a language he had hoped no-one else would ever hear of. He had thought that the language had died off with his old mentor – _but it’d be like the old bastard to steal some obscure human language and adopt it as his own_ – and though he was mistaken, he was almost glad it had been written as it was. The contents were… suffice to say, they should never fall into the hands of a common man. That might just break their poor, untrained mind.

Since he had discovered his newfound corporeality, he had learned it’s limits. He couldn’t become visible, nor could he interact with a human being directly. But he _could_ move things. That was an improvement.

He had also discovered that he was still able to take shortcuts. The surface was riddled with them: at least one of his previous selves had remarked on that, but now he understood why. It was how the magicians got from place-to-place unnoticed, without attracting attention from the world at large. It was interesting, discovering that he still had magical abilities despite the weakness of his SOUL. He could summon his blasters too, but that was not only a serious drain of his limited power, but the resulting skulls were once again only visible to Sans and their shots were powerless to do anything. Gravity control and telekinesis were still impossible, but he thought that if he gave it time, he might get them back. Or maybe if he exercised his magic enough, he would be able to use them again.

He discarded the thought. It still seemed like too much work for him.

The three weeks after he had read the letter had been hell, aside from those happy discoveries. Mostly because he was waiting to see what would happen at the meeting the letter seemed to dictate. A meeting between wizards, here in Ebott Valley… it wasn’t hard to believe, per se, but it was certainly exiting. The prospect that had him least excited him about the meeting was it’s subject matter, but that too was necessary. Because if the wizards were meeting about a flaw in the Barrier… he wouldn’t miss it for the world.

So he survived for three weeks, anticipation building up in his bones until he could barely contain it. Quinton was similarly restless, likely for the same purpose: he would take a shortcut from his home to some far-off location in the forest, where he would sit and calm his nerves. Sans had learned to follow him through the shortcuts without issue, though occasionally he would still get lost in the sprawling complex of passageways beneath the surface of reality. The similar network that he had set up in the Underground was pathetic compared to this, though he didn’t have the entire surface of the world to cover. It made him feel safer about leaving Ebott Valley behind, knowing he could always find his way back.

When the day had finally come, it was the middle of December. People in Ebott Town were decorating for Christmas (Sans still couldn’t believe that the exact same holiday had sprung up both on the surface and in the Underground without any relation), but Quinton’s house was dark and cold where the others were brightly lit with roaring fireplaces and well-placed lamps. He had too much on his mind to worry about something so silly as a holiday. After all, he had the rest of his incredibly life to celebrate.

Sans was sitting on the desk next to Quinton, careful to maintain his incorporeality, when they finally came. A knock on the door might be polite, but wizards had no time to worry about such niceties. They merely appeared where they wanted to. There were three of them, all wearing hooded robes that cast unnatural shadows that shrouded their faces in magical darkness. All were staring at Quinton when he finally turned to look at him.

“ _It is time,_ ” the one on the left said in a voice that sounded like crusty sandpaper being rubbed against itself.

“Indeed it is,” said the one on the right. Their voice flowed along in a sing-song way that Sans didn’t find entirely unfamiliar.

The one in the center merely reached out their arms towards the man sitting at his desk. Sighing, Quinton stood up and after a moment of hesitation embraced the wizard standing in the center.

“Father,” he whispered, voice strangely cold. “It has been too long.”

“Indeed it has, my child,” the Red Wizard said, flipping back their hood to reveal the face of a man in his late middle-age, hair balding and greying, but their eyes spoke volumes more about the untold aeons they had lived. “Come. We have much to discuss.” And with that, he turned to the wall behind him and pointed.

Sans gasped when he recognized the door that hadn’t been there before. It was gray and unassuming, only standing out against the peach-colored wall by its lack of color. The group of wizards began to walk towards it. Awestruck, Sans followed, slipping in before the raspy-voiced one had shut the door behind them. What struck them more was what was behind the door.

There wasn’t much in the completely colorless room. Only a simple wooden table with a stack of folders on it and a similarly wooden box, with a lock holding down a heavy lid. The box was shaking, but no sound escaped.

Quinton asked the first thing that popped into Sans’ mind. “What’s in the box?” he asked, pointing an unsteady finger. His face bore a look of… insecurity on it.

“Nothing much,” the Red Wizard said, looking at the box and smiling. “Just some child I grabbed off the street.”

Quinton’s mouth fell open in shock. “Wh-what? You’re joking, right? ‘Cause that isn’t very funny.”

“No, I’m dead serious,” the older man said as he turned back to face his son, a bemused expression on his face. “What are you worried about? Nobody’s going to miss them.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re serious. You’re really fucking serious,” Quinton mumbled, holding his head in his hands. “What the hell are you thinking! That’s somebody’s kid! You can’t just take-”

“I can and I did. It’s too late to turn back now. Best to keep moving forward.”

“You- you- you motherfucking _psychopath_!”

“It would be best to not dwell on the fate of the unfortunate child for now,” said the wizard that sounded like they were always on the verge of song. “There are more… pressing matters to attend to.”

“Like what? That’s a human life in there! A kid! There’s nothing more important than-” Quinton began, but the Red Wizard cut him off.

“There’s no time for that now. We have to move _fast_. We might have waited too long in coming to get you.” He turned to the folders on the table and gestured to them with his hand. “I will allow the Cyan Wizard to explain the nature of these.”

The Cyan Wizard – the one with the voice that sounded like death – gathered up the folders into a neat stack. Sans instantly wanted to scatter them again, finding it too organized, but he stopped. Why would he think that? “We found a room similar to this one elsewhere in the Void. It was filled with piles upon piles of these.” They gestured to the folders. It suddenly dawned on Sans what they were, and he felt his SOUL sink to his stomach. “As far as we have gathered, they are the writings of an entity known as ‘Sans’. A monster, if it is to be believed. He seems to remember the timelines in a similar manner to you and your father. These are the ‘reports’ from multiple timelines he had lived through. There are two types of timelines of interest. The first, where the Barrier is broken by… something. It references the involvement of a human child and of multiple human souls in the breaking, however.” Quinton’s jaw dropped in shock, but the Cyan Wizard continued. “But, that is the less troubling of the two scenarios. The reports which worry us more are the ones that predict the end of reality. Indeed, this ‘Sans’ seems to believe that reality was destroyed after a human child – the same one involved in the breaking – murdered every last living monster they could find, only to be put back together by some outside force. Now you understand our need for haste.”

“But… but… a kid can’t destroy reality! That’s impossible!” Quinton stuttered. He had lost his cool the moment he learned that there was a human child trapped in the box.

“Indeed, but that is irrelevant at the moment. Whatever the truth, both issues are caused by multiple humans falling into the Underground at various points of time. This possibility seems to be the result of something that our _trusted_ sources have informed us of.” They seemed to say trusted with a sneer, but nobody said a word. “The Barrier has a weakness. A hole in Mount Ebott that a powerful enough SOUL could simply fall into and become trapped in the Underground alongside the monsters. A human SOUL would be sufficiently powerful for this purpose, unfortunately.”

Quinton still seemed shocked, but he had recovered from it enough to speak. “Then why don’t we go and fix the Barrier? It should only take four of you.”

“Which is the root of our issue,” the Red Wizard interjected. “Seemingly unrelated to the problem with the Barrier, wizards are disappearing without cause. Including the other four members of the Seven Sorcerers. It’s just us, now.”

The box had stopped shaking. The child had stopped trying to escape. Maybe they had finally suffocated. Sans felt a surge of guilt, for some reason.

“We have a thought as to what might be doing this,” the sing-song wizard said, voice clear. “Whispers throughout the multiverse, the ripples from a flaw in reality flowing over into every possible time and place. A god that does not exist.” They paused without reason in the middle of their explanation. “The whispers in the darkest reaches of the Void have a name for this creature, a name that is not its own, but it is the names own. He had another name once, but it is irrelevant now. He is now everything and nothing but the man who speaks in hands.”

Sans could hear distorted laughter rippling across his mind in a flash of pain, but he couldn’t focus on it. Memories of days that had not passed filling his head. A man who had never existed doing things that had never happened. Yet it was real. Somehow.

“So you think that a literal _void god_ is killing off the wizards?” Quinton asked, incredulity on his face. “Why?”

“Because it is fate. Or because it isn’t. It doesn’t really matter.”

“Cut out the poetic shit, Purple. You have a reason for thinking this. What is it?”

“Because when you stare into the abyss, it stares back. And then it smiles.” The Purple Wizard was off his rocker, but what he was saying was all too familiar to Sans.

Quinton was about to raise an objection, but the Red Wizard once again cut him off. “We don’t have time to argue. All we know is that we have a short window to fix the Barrier forever or else reality ends in about nine hundred years. Come.” He started striding towards the door again, the other wizards following behind him quietly.

All except Quinton.

“Then why the child? Why do you need them? We can seal the Barrier – for good – without some kid dying for it.” He was adamant about saving the child’s life. It reminded Sans of himself back when he had still given a damn.

“The child is for if this fails,” his father said quietly. “We need a plan B, just in case.”

“But- but why all this secrecy? Why haven’t you already done something about this? If time is of the essence, why take me here in the first place.”

Everyone was silent, looking away from Quinton’s eyes. Finally, the Cyan Wizard whispered in a low, almost-failing voice, “Because further evidence says that we have tried this before. And failed.”

In absolute silence, the wizards had begun filing out of the room. Quinton was last, torn between the door and the box that contained a human child, before finally leaving after the others. Sans hurried to keep up, not wanting to risk getting trapped in a room in the Void without any clue on how to escape. His mind was racing frantically.

_Oh god, they found my reports! I thought I had hidden those! But they found them… and they try- tried to do something about the end of the world. By fixing the Barrier. But- but the Barrier was never fixed, right? Because if it were, the kids never would have been able to fall in the first place. So what happened to this attempt at saving the world? Was it- was it_ him _?_

_I guess I’m about to find out._

The door deposited them outside a cave on Mount Ebott at night. A small cave whose greatest feature was the hole in the center of it Sans knew would lead directly down into the Underground. He wanted nothing more than to jump down the hole and go home after what had added up to almost a century. But he knew he wouldn’t make it through. He didn’t have a powerful enough soul. He wondered what would happen to someone who failed to pass through.

“Well,” Quinton said, tilting his head slightly at the sight. “This… hole… is the entrance to the Underground anyone can get in through? Not much to look at, if you ask me.”

**IN MY OPINION, THE BEST SECRET ENTRANCES ARE HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT, JUST OFT OVERLOOKED.**

Sans started to sweat incorporeally at the sound of the voice. It wasn’t something he heard with his ears, but with his mind. He knew it wouldn’t help anything to turn around and search for its source. He’d never find it unless the old man wanted to be found.  _Why is he here? There's no reason for him to be here_.

The others, who had apparently heard the same mental message, did not understand this. They began staring into the darkness, conjuring their most powerful magics in fear. Even the supremely powerful Red Wizard was astounded by the telepathic missive. “Where are you, demon? Show yourself!” he cried into the darkness, summoning up a scythe of radiant light.

But nobody came.

He was already there.

**I AM NOT A DEMON. THAT TERM IS BEST RESERVED FOR ANOTHER CHARACTER IN THIS PITIFUL STORY YOU CALL LIFE.**

The Purple Wizard was the first one to notice the smiling face in the darkness, but their cry of alarm was cut short by a blast of black energy from a hidden skull made of shadows. The gasterblaster’s beam ignored the wizard’s outer layer of clothing and whatever protective charms they had laid on themselves, instead piercing directly to the flesh beneath and the SOUL housed within. The SOUL, which had been hidden until a moment ago, was called out into the black of the cave, where the purple light it itself shed disappeared in the blast. When the beam faded, leaving only gray behind, the SOUL was still intact and still shining it’s familiar color, but all that was left of the person it had been attached to was the hooded cloak lying on the ground where they had once stood. Sans could barely make out the dust floating out of the empty robes.

“ _You… you_ monster!” the Cyan Wizard screamed as they hurled flaming balls of hatred into the darkness, to no avail: the face was already gone.

**THAT TERM IS LACKING TO DESCRIBE WHAT I AM CALLED NOW. WHILE ONCE I MAY HAVE BEEN CALLED MONSTER, I AM BOTH MORE AND LESS SIMULTANEOUSLY. SOME WITH KNOWLEDGE INSIST ON CALLING ME THE MAN WHO SPEAKS IN HANDS, BUT "HANDS" IS MERELY THE CODE THAT WE BOTH WRITE IN. BUT YOU... YOU MAY CALL ME GOD.**

The Cyan Wizard shuddered as something penetrated their body: a single bone, made up of pure darkness, protruded from their chest. Sans could hear as their SOUL shattered irrevocably, the body falling limp to the floor in the pale light of the purple SOUL. The Red Wizard screamed in frustration. Then light began radiating from his body, piercing through every shadow. Except for the ones that put there on purpose.

“Call it off, void-thing! My son can still reset this timeline! We’ll be safe from you for at least a little while, because not even you are more powerful than the resets!”

**INCORRECT HYPOTHESIS. THAT WAS TRUE OF ALL PREVIOUS TIMELINES. BUT NOT THIS ONE. SOMEONE ELSE HOLDS THAT ULTIMATE POWER, MY TWISTED FRIEND. THAT PERSON IS WITNESSING THIS RIGHT NOW. BUT EVEN IF YOUR SON HELD THE POWER TO RESET IN HIS HANDS, HE WOULD NOT HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY. YOU WOULD STOP HIM YOURSELF.**

“It- It’s true, Dad,” Quinton said, his head hung low in shame. “I can’t reset. I know I should be able to, but something… something is keeping me from doing so. I’m so sorry. I can’t fix any of this.” He kept moving about the cave, eyes glancing in every direction as he watched for the… the thing from the Void.

Sans was amazed. _Quinton could reset? I mean, he is awfully determined, but I mean, this power…_ I _stole it from him._ Then he noticed the disfigured white skull staring right in his face with those empty eyes of his. He hadn’t even seen the face materialize. He jumped back, cursing as he forced his little magic into the familiar form of gasterblasters. They would be ineffective, but at least they might buy him some time to think of a way out of this mess.

But the thing, still smiling that vacant smile with eyes that betrayed his lack of a SOUL, turned away to face Quinton.

**YOU ARE CORRECT. YOU CAN FIX NOTHING. THIS ENCOUNTER ALWAYS FOLLOWS THE EXACT SAME FORMULA. YOU ARE CAUTIOUS FOR A YOUTH, DEAR SOUL. A COMMENDABLE TRAIT IN EVEN THE ELDEST. BUT ALLOW ME TO ASK YOU AN IMPORTANT QUESTION…**

A massive gasterblaster the size of Sans coalesced in the air behind Quinton without warning, but Quinton still made an attempt to dodge out of the way. It was no good. Quinton’s body disappeared in a similar manner to the Purple Wizard’s as the ray of pure darkness hit him, leaving his clothing on the ground unoccupied by a human body and his SOUL floating vacantly in the air.

**SINCE WHEN WAS CAUTION OF ANY USE?**

The gasterblaster skull dropped its attack and slowly turned to face the Red Wizard.

But the Wizard was already moving.

He seized his son’s SOUL in his telekinetic grasp and dashed for the gray doorway just outside the cave, avoiding spectral bones and shadowy bolts of darkness from skulls composed of the shadows. Sans frowned: those attacks were obviously telegraphed, easy to avoid for the elderly wizard. Why would the old man do that?

Then, as the Red Wizard slammed the door to the void-room shut, Sans realized why: it was on purpose. He wanted the wizard to reach the doorway. But the question of why remained.

The incarnation of shadows stopped hurling too-easy attacks at the Wizard the moment he disappeared, and instead turned to Sans. He waved a palmless hand towards the startled skeleton, then faded into the shadows again. The old man was planning something. But what? Sans dismissed his skulls, seeing he had no need for them.

There was nobody left alive but Sans.

The purple SOUL was left floating lonely in the air. Sans collapsed on the ground next to it, breathing heavily. He had summoned two blasters into existence, expending most of his energy, then wasn’t even able to use them and release his pent-up magic. Instead, he had been forced to dismiss them while most of his power was contained in their skull-like forms. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

He looked up at the form of the pale purple SOUL hanging in the air besides him. What would become of it now? Inevitably, without any form of body to keep it contained, it would shatter into pieces like the cyan SOUL had. That wasn’t fair to the poor wizard. They had done nothing wrong – _they were one of the ones to lock you Underground in the first place!_ – nothing so terrible as to warrant their death like that, without a body, just wasting away in the open air. If only there was something to contain them, like a vessel. Or a body. What were the old stories about SOULs?

Sudden inspiration struck Sans. Hesitantly, he reached up into the air to touch the shimmering, flickering SOUL. Maybe… just maybe… fate would be so kind as to let both of them live again. He touched the SOUL softly, stroking it gently with barely corporeal fingertips. It shivered under his soft caress, the light radiating from it flickering strangely. Then, as tenderly as he had began, he made as to absorb the SOUL himself. Anything would be preferable to death for the wizard. He accepted the SOUL into himself.

But it refused.

Shocked, Sans pushed it harder to inhabit his body, yet it still fought back. Sans realized he should be absorbing the SOUL without difficulty, especially considering his newfound willpower, but there was some other thing competing for ownership of the SOUL. As if it already possessed a form. Maybe… one similar to Sans’ now?

The SOUL disappeared.

The cloak that the Purple Wizard had abandoned as he disappeared suddenly floated into the air and began to… fill out? Contorting itself strangely, it began to look as though an invisible person were putting it on. Curious, Sans asked out loud, “Hello?”

The cloak stopped and turned to look around, but apparently didn’t see Sans. Then, that same sing-song voice came from under the darkened hood, “Tra la la. Thank you for trying to help, but I really have it handled.”

“What?” Sans stumbled back in shock. “You’re… alive? And you can see me?”

“Of course I am alive. To the best of my knowledge,” the Purple Wizard admitted. “Neither of us really are, but you know what I mean. And I don’t see anything: I would need eyes to do that.”

“What… what happened?”

“The same thing that always happens. The same thing that should never have happened. Beginning the End far before the beginning.”

“Oh, I get it,” Sans said, scratching the back of his head. “You’re batshit crazy. As usual, River Person.”

River Person grinned. Maybe. Sans couldn’t tell, but he thought they did. “That is true. I _am_ the riverman, after all. Or am I the riverwoman? It doesn’t really matter.”

“Alright, then, River Person. You obviously remember me. How can you do that? Isn’t that impossible?”

“Tra la la. What is possible? What is real? Is magic? Is that human? Is this world? Maybe. Maybe not. In the end, it won’t matter. All one needs to do is persevere.”

“Oh-kay, you’re gonna be like this,” Sans muttered under his breath. Then he addressed the River Person directly. “So what now?”

“A SOUL survives. A demon dies. A ghost and a madman become mere memories. A sunrise unlike any seen before.”

“Goddamn you, what about Gaster? What about you?”

“A man who speaks in hands waits patiently. Time breaks even the strongest of minds. A boat floats down a river, same as always.

“I must go now. The river beckons. I do love to ride in my boat. Tra la la.” And with that, the cloaked form of the River Person jumped down the hole into the Underground, where Sans could not follow.

However much he wished he could.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

**ENTRY NUMBER ????**

**CURIOUS.**

**THIS TIMELINE HAS NEW FACTORS TO CONSIDER.**

**A CERTAIN ASSOCIATE OF OURS HAS INTRODUCED… COMPLICATIONS TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER.**

**I APPLAD HIS ENTHUSIASM. IT REMINDS ME OF MYSELF.**

**BUT HE DOESN’T REALIZE THAT HE INADVERTENTLY CREATED A NEW UNIVERSE.**

**EVEN I DIDN'T CONSIDER THIS AS A POSSIBILITY UNTIL NOW.**

**PERHAPS IT IS FOR THE BEST THAT HE REMAINS UNAWARE. HE WILL LEARN THE TRUTH EVENTUALLY.**

**WE MUST REMAIN CAUTIOUS. OBSERVE FROM A DISTANCE. LET EVENTS PLAY OUT.**

**PERHAPS THIS WILL BE JUST THE UNIVERSE WE NEED.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here this is! Once again, it was hard to write the action a little, despite how little action actually took place. Just trying to figure out the best way to put it. That's always been my problem with writing sword fights and things like that, too: I mean, you don't want to write out every swing, but even worse is "they fought for several minutes before -blah- happened."
> 
> Still looking for a good name for this AU. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> I normally would write more notes, but here's what happened: my computer attempted to commit suicide and I was barely able to save the story. I'm actually posting this from somebody else's computer right now. I hope you understand as I take a week off to get a new computer or get my old one to work somehow. I think I can still answer comments from my phone, so don't worry! I'll still be around.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed! See you in the next one!


	8. Snow

The darkness is so… welcoming. Calming, covering all. It’s… heavenly, and I don’t say that about much. Reminds me a bit of the Void, but warmer. And more comforting. There is always that faint voice in the back of your mind, that brief memory that you never experienced, but you have grown used to it at this point. More annoying is the second voice, still rendered incomprehensible to your ears. It seems concerned, and is definitely insistent, but you roll over anyway, murmuring for five more minutes.

“HUMAN! HUMAN!”

The voice is annoyingly keeping you from drifting on back to sleep. Grudgingly, you open your eyes to the sight of a goofy skull frowning down at you in concern. But the moment they see your eyes are opened, their smile returns and they wipe… sweat? condensation? condensation off their forehead in relief.

“OH, THANK GOD, HUMAN! FOR A MOMENT THERE, I THOUGHT YOU WERE ILL. OR SANS IN A HUMAN DISGUISE,” they said, their eyes glancing back as they considered that thought. “ON SECOND THOUGHT, I DON’T THINK SANS HAS THE ENERGY TO PRETEND TO BE HUMAN, EVEN A SLEEPING ONE. DIDN’T ANYONE EVER TELL YOU THAT SNOW DOES NOT MAKE A GOOD MATTRESS? I TRIED IT ONCE AND I JUST GOT THE CHILLS!” You look around at the place you’re in. It appears to be a small stand, as if for hotdogs, but someone has rigged up a heater for you. You are covered in a red blanket. Actually, upon further inspection, it is revealed to be a cape sized for someone much larger than yourself.

Your wounds… they been bandaged in clean rags, inexpertly but tightly. You realize your HP is at 8. The skeleton had obviously tried to patch you up.

This skeleton looks familiar. Then again, you only know two of them. You say as much.

“WOWIE! I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS ALSO POPULAR ON THE SURFACE! YES, IT IS I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS! _CAPTAIN_ OF THE SNOWDIN GUARD!”

Captain? You look at his battle-body – actually, it can properly be called his armor. Dark, imposing, and almost terrifying, though it still retains the same basic shape of his battle-body, though a lot less revealing. It looks familiar to Undyne’s set when she was captain, but lighter-colored. And without a helmet. You congratulate Papyrus on his promotion.

“PROMOTION? I’VE ALWAYS BEEN CAPTAIN OF THE SNOWDIN GUARD! AT LEAST, THAT’S WHAT SANS SAYS!”

“It’s true, bro,” a voice behind Papyrus says. You move your head to look around Papyrus at Sans, this time made up of a fluffy white substance.

“SANS! WHY ARE YOU MADE OF SNOW AGAIN? YOU’RE GONNA MELT ALL OVER THE FLOOR!”

“ _Chill_ , bro. It’ _snow_ problem. I’ll be right out again in a jiffy. Just needed to talk to the kid, first.”

“LAST TIME YOU SAID THAT YOU’D BE GONE SOON, YOU JUST FELL ASLEEP ON THE COUCH! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET BACK TO BEING GOOD OL’ BONE AND MORE BONE AGAIN?”

“End of the week, when I come to visit you, same as always, Paps. Maybe earlier. Who knows? I kinda like being made of snow. It’s kinda n _ice_.” Sans winks at you as Papyrus takes a moment to recognize the joke.

“SANS!”

The snow-Sans awkwardly shifts on his feet, his eyes cast to the side. “Look, bro, I’m kinda in a hurry right now. I just need a moment alone with the human for a moment, then I’ll be out of your hair. Figuratively. Unless you have some hair you haven’t told me about…?”

“FINE! HAVE IT YOUR WAY! HUMAN!” Papyrus says, addressing you in his usually loud voice. “I HAVE TO LEAVE YOU WITH MY BROTHER FOR A WHILE! NEVER FEAR! I WILL BE RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD FROM THIS SENTRY STATION.” He then considers your clothes, the torn up t-shirt and shorts that you have worn for ages. “YOU LOOK COLD, TINY HUMAN! I WILL FETCH YOU ONE OF SANS’ OLD HOODIES! HE NEVER WEARS THEM ANYMORE! NYEH HEH HEH!” And with that strange laugh of his, Papyrus practically teleports out of the sentry station, sprinting down the road to Snowdin. You expect him to be back within minutes as your eyes follow him running down the trail.

“So…” Sans starts, his voice trailing off at the end. You realize you have just been left alone with the shorter, more terrifying skeleton. “What’s the matter kid? You look _chilled to the bone_.”

S-Sans…

“How’d you like Muffet? I gave her a heads up that you were coming. I mean, you were always gonna get out of the Ruins, but to beat that psychotic spider-bitch without reloading a single SAVE… gotta say I’m impressed. But I arach _need_ you to listen to me seriously for a moment.”

Without warning, you attempt to stab Sans with your knife. Your attack is slow and weak due to your physical condition – wounded and freezing to death – but Sans makes no attempt to dodge. Instead, he merely grins as the toy knife passes through his snowy form. Miss…?

“Well. I’d give you an E for Effort, but I don’t think it’s worth the energy.” He shrugs. “Look, kid. I promised you that you were gonna have a bad time. You had one. I’m giving you a second chance. Not to get everyone out of the Underground or to free everyone, but to live a happy life down here. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for anyone but you. I’m sure you know how bad the surface is.” You nod, but only because I told you to. While most of your memories are faded and blurry for some reason, my clear memories of humanity are… less than pleasant. “I know, Chara, I know. But, here’s the thing: if you ever _touch_ Papyrus, or tell him _anything_ about the previous timelines, I won’t just kill you. I’ll throw you in the CORE and watch as your SOUL is burned from existence. You will have never even existed in the first place. That goes for your little stowaway, too. However much they like destroying reality, I think they’re more scared of oblivion than either of us.

“So, remember: leave Papyrus alone, or you’re gonna have a… you get the picture.” The snow-Sans falls to pieces on the floor as Papyrus predicted, but you get the impression that he’s still watching you… somehow. You shiver, but it’s not from the cold.

You gather up Papyrus’ cape and shroud yourself in it. It’s long enough to almost drag the ground when it’s wrapped around you like a blanket, but it’ll do. You step out of the sentry station.

It’s the path that ends with the conveniently-shaped lamp. You had passed out from your wounds at the start of the path, but Papyrus had still come to your rescue. I wonder what he was doing all the way at the door to the Ruins. Eh. No use thinking about it now. You can wait.

You reach the SAVE point on Box Road, named after the resident box that some box lover had left there. Your miraculous survival of the battle against Muffet fills you with Determination enough to SAVE as you interact with the yellow star. Your health doesn’t come back, though. Then you check the box and frown: the Tough Glove sits abandoned in the box, obviously stiff from disuse. You look at it, then back to your knife. You think that you’ll prefer to stick with your plastic weapon so far: at the very least, it can be somewhat useful out of combat. Then you continue down the path.

There Papyrus stands, bedecked in his silvery royal guard armor. He looks… less without his cape, though you’re not sure how. He’s facing the other way for some reason, talking on his phone. Sans’ familiar hoodie is in his hand, but it looks like it’s been forgotten.

“LOOK, I’M A LITTLE BUSY AT THE MOMENT. I’VE JUST CAUGHT A HUMAN!” Then he sighed in annoyance. “NO, IT ISN’T LIKE THE LAST TIME. I’D NEVER SEEN A HUMAN BEFORE, AND THAT ROCK WAS LOOKING AWFULLY SUSPICIOUS.” You know, I always love when Papyrus mistakes that rock for us. You gaze back fondly at the stone lying in the path. “YES, YES, I KNOW UNDYNE IS POWERFUL, BUT CAN’T YOU JUST HOLD THE LINE UNTIL I’VE ESCORTED THIS HUMAN TO SNOWDIN?” Another sigh, this one even more exasperated. “FINE, DOGAMY, I’LL BE THERE IN A MINUTE. I JUST HAVE TO INFORM THE HUMAN.” He turned around in defeat, but then he sees you. His face lights up, but his smile is slightly forced.

“OH! HUMAN! I WAS JUST… DOING GUARD THINGS! OH! AND YOU BROUGHT MY CAPE! THANK YOU! ” He grins as he accepts back his cape, donning it with a flourish. His smile turns nervous, but he tries to look confident. “SO, UH… *cough*” He looks around awkwardly, but then an idea pops into his head. “HUMAN! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, CAPTURE YOU!” He points towards you smiling broadly, but you look at him in confusion. He also appears to not know how to proceed. “UH… NOW THAT YOU ARE MY PRISONER, I… I…” He looks flustered, eyes dancing from side to side in an attempt to avoid your gaze. “I’M SORRY, HUMAN. YOU CAME AT AN AWKWARD TIME FOR THE GUARD. I CAN’T REALLY CAPTURE YOU PROPERLY . WOULD YOU MIND… WOULD YOU MIND JUST _TELLING_ EVERYONE I CAPTURED YOU?” He grins at you shyly, but eagerly. You can’t help but nod, even against your better judgement.

Papyrus looks at you in shock, jaw literally dropping. His eyes are practically shining in happiness. “REALLY?!? YOU WILL?!? THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU- *cough* UM, I MEAN, GOOD! I’VE REALLY GOT TO GO NOW, BUT! I’VE LEFT YOU SOMETHING SO YOU WON’T GET BORED ON THE WAY TO SNOWDIN TOWN! YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT IT IS!” Puzzles? “PUZZLES! AND I LEFT YOU A SNACK OF MY WORLD FAMOUS SPAGHETTI, IN CASE YOU GET HUNGRY! I’LL BE BACK AS SOON AS I CAN!” And with that, Papyrus started sprinting down the road, seeming like he was floating. Then he stopped, sprinted back and and threw the hoodie in your arms abruptly. You struggle to catch it, but you manage.

“OH, AND BEFORE I FORGET! THIS IS SANS’ OLD HOODIE! HE DOESN’T WEAR IT MUCH ANYMORE, SO YOU’RE WELCOME TO WEAR IT AS LONG AS YOU’RE MY PRISONER! I’M SURE HE WON’T REALLY MIND!” And then, with a final “NYEH!”, Papyrus once again sprinted down the path, disappearing at a turn down the road.

You look down at the hoodie in your hands. It’s the same blue, greasy thing that Sans has worn in every reset before, covered in miscellaneous stains and heavily wrinkled. You sniff in disdain and are about to throw it away, but let’s not be hasty now, Frisk. It’s still warm, and considering how you almost _died_ in the snow last time, I think even a little discomfort – _it’s the hoodie of the guy who’s killed you thousands of times –_ is worth avoiding that. Frowning, you give in to my arguments and shrug the hoodie on.

Instantly, you feel better. Not only is it so _warm_ , but the familiar smell of burgers and ketchup which follows Sans around everywhere floods your nostrils. You could get used to this, despite your discomfort at wearing your killer’s clothes.

Walking down the trail, you find a shed made out of a cardboard box before you. There seems to be some narration on this cardboard box. YOU OBSERVE THE WELL-CRAFTED SENTRY STATION. WHO COULD HAVE BUILT THIS, YOU PONDER… You’re not pondering at all. Even if you hadn’t seen the same “sentry station” more times than you could count, the handwriting obviously belongs to the larger of the skeleton brothers. I BET IT WAS THAT VERY FAMOUS ROYAL GUARDSMAN! (NOTE: NOT YET A VERY FAMOUS ROYAL GUARDSMAN) (NOTE 2: IS NOW ACTUALLY A VERY FAMOUS GUARDSMAN!) That second note is newer, but not unexpected, considering Papyrus’ position as Captain of the Guard.

As you continue walking down the trail, you come across Doggo’s sentry station. It appears to be unoccupied, as it always does, but this time you walk confidently by the sign (Absolutely NO MOVING!), assured that being Papyrus’ “prisoner” gives you some level of immunity.

However, you freeze when you see Doggo appear in his station. Better safe than sorry, if you know what I mean. “Did something move? Was it my imagination? If something _was_ moving… for example, a human… I’ll make sure it never moves again!” Despite his apparent ignorance of your existence, your SOUL is pulled into a fight.

You protest, saying the Papyrus has taken you prisoner, but Doggo just says, “A voice? So there IS somebody there! Damn kids, playing tricks on an old dog! I’ll teach you! Don’t move an inch!” He hurls a blue sword at you, but you don’t move so it passes right through you without hurting you.

You once again say that you are Papyrus’ prisoner, and this time he seems to hear you a bit more. “A prisoner? But Papyrus ran through here just a minute ago! Where would he go without his precious prisoner, hmm? You’re a dirty moving liar!” A similar blue blade goes through your body without effect.

Sighing, you reach for the stick you managed to drag down into the Underground- but you realize that you left it in the Ruins. You curse your stupidity and instead draw closer to the dog, hand stretched out.

“Halt!” he shouts, quivering in rage. “Don’t you move an inch!” Another ineffective blade. You stretch out your hand and- pet Doggo between his ears.

Doggo goes crazy, barking in all directions and forgetting to even make an attack. While he’s distracted, you sprint further down the road, coming to a rest only when Doggo’s station is left far behind. As you catch your breath, your phone begins to ring. Curious as to who could be calling you, you take the phone out of your pocket and answer.

“HELLO! THIS IS PAPYRUS!” You start to speak through the receiver, but he cuts you off. “HOW DID I GET THIS NUMBER…? IT WAS EASY! I JUST DIALED EVERY NUMBER SEQUENTIALLY UNTIL I GOT YOURS!!! NYEH HEH HEH HEH!” You just stare blankly at the trees around you. Papyrus usually does this, but you’re in Waterfall by the time it happens. “SO… I’M SORRY THAT I CAN’T MAKE IT BACK TO YOU RIGHT NOW, BUT I AM A LITTLE PREOCCUPIED,” he says nervously. You hear a scream of rage faintly in the background, and he laughs anxiously. You wonder what that sound came from. “BUT DON’T WORRY! I WILL DEFINITELY BE DONE WITH MY BUSINESS BY THE TIME YOU REACH SNOWDIN! BUT… THE OTHER GUARD MEMBERS IN SNOWDIN… THEY DON’T BELIEVE I FOUND A HUMAN! SO BE CAREFUL AROUND THEM. THEIR OPINIONS OF HUMANS ARE VERY…” He pauses, obviously looking for the proper word, before just saying “MURDERY. WELL, WORRY NOT, DEAR HUMAN! PAPYRUS WILL KEEP YOU SAFE! JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU ARE MY PRISONER, AND THEY’LL LET YOU BY, NO PROBLEM!” A sudden crash fills the background of the call, and Papyrus yelps. You imagine him jumping in surprise into the air, perhaps even several feet. “UH-OH… WELL, I’LL CALL YOU BACK LATER, HUMAN! BYE!” The phone clicks as Papyrus hangs up. I wonder what he was doing wherever he is. Oh, well. We’ll figure that out when we see him again, won’t we? You continue down the road.

A you enter a clearing in the forest, the first thing you see is Sans, still made of snow, standing at ease and grinning absently. You recoil in shock, but Sans doesn’t move. He just stands there, hands in pockets made of ice. You slowly approach the snow-Sans, cautious and ready to attack if necessary. Sans doesn’t react. Maybe he’s asleep…?

Wait, never mind. There’s a sticky note stuck to Sans’ snow-hoodie: “I MADE YOU THIS BODY SO YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN WHEN YOU VISIT! ENJOY!” You smile at Papyrus’ note for his brother, but something about the note doesn’t add up. “Make your own” body? So, does Sans have to possess some sort of body or something? That would explain why he’s only shown up as dust or snow. But why does he need the body? Answering this question might be the key to unraveling what Sans is now.

You go to visit the snowman. In its place is a lifeless mound of snow. You take a snowman piece anyway, as a memento. How it can still be considered a snowman piece is beyond me. Maybe we can just call it a snowball?

You arrive at a patch of bare ground, shoveled free of all snow. In front of it is a letter on pale stationary lying on the ground. “HUMAN! (OR FELLOW PUZZLE CONNOISSEUR!) YOU MIGHT FIND THIS PUZZLE… QUITE SHOCKING!!! FOR YOU SEE, THIS IS THE INVISIBLE ELECTRICITY MAZE!!! WHEN YOU TOUCH THE WALLS OF THIS MAZE, THIS ORB WILL ADMINISTER A HEARTY ZAP! SOUND LIKE FUN??? BECAUSE! THE AMOUNT OF FUN YOU WILL PROBABLY HAVE, IS ACTUALLY RATHER SMALL I THINK. OK, YOU CAN GO AHEAD NOW.”

…he still has the orb, doesn’t he. That’s… unfortunate.

You walk straight through the maze, wincing with each step. The walls aren’t really walls, per se, but are more similar to the invisible fences that people on the surface used to keep their pets in line. If Papyrus has the orb, like you suspect, he’s in serious pain right now. And considering the situation you last heard he was in… I hope he’s okay. Papyrus always was my favorite.

I never enjoyed killing him as much as you did.

You walk through the area that has the game “Ball.” You have been starved for cash recently: none of the monsters you’ve encountered have dropped any gold, so it appears that “Ball” is your best bet for making money. Of course, after countless resets, the game has become easy, so it only takes your three tries to achieve the red flag. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.

What? I know you’re the one who played the game, but still, I feel as if it was really my victory for recommending you stay and win the game. We needed the gold. Desperately. How are we supposed to get a room at the inn without any money?

After a hearty few games of “Ball,” you encounter a piece of paper lying on the ground, with a letter taped to it. Because Papyrus couldn’t have just written on his brother’s puzzle, however terrible it is. Oh, well. You open the letter and begin to read.

“THIS NEXT PUZZLE IS DESIGNED BY MY BROTHER, SANS! YOU WILL SURELY BE CONFOUNDED! I KNOW I AM!” There are a couple of “NYEH”s written on the paper after the note. That’s Papyrus for you, I suppose. You pick up the piece of paper that constitutes Sans’ “puzzle” and look it over, slightly confused.

The paper is still the same "Monster Kidz Word Search" as it always is, jumbled letters all over the sheet. But the words it’s telling you to look for are different. For example, you don’t remember the words “dust,” “king,” “rebellion,” and “genocide” on the original puzzle. The typical “giasfclfebrehber” remains, however. The puzzle is still unsolvable, however. You can't find that final “r” in “murderer,” no matter how hard you look. Oh, well. There’s really nothing stopping you from just continuing on, is there? Just idle fancy.

You finally come across the second mouse hole. The familiar squeaks are still mysteriously absent, but there is still a plate of inedible spaghetti on the table next to a microwave that isn’t plugged in. You pick up Papyrus’ note, which is lying in the snow next to the table for some mysterious reason, and begin to read: “HUMAN! PLEASE ENJOY THIS SPAGHETTI. (LITTLE DO YOU KNOW, THIS SPAGHETTI IS A TRAP… DESIGNED TO ENTICE YOU!!! YOU’LL BE SO BUSY EATING IT… THAT I’LL BE ABLE TO COME BACK BEFORE YOU REACH SNOWDIN!! THOROUGHLY JAPED AGAIN BY THE GREAT PAPYRUS!!!) NYEH-HEH-HEH, PAPYRUS.”

I would laugh if I could, but you just stare at the note blankly and drop it back into the snow. Then, ignoring the plate of repulsive spaghetti and the useless microwave, you continue on, pulling Sans’ hoodie closer to yourself in an attempt to keep warm. Oh well. I guess there’s no point in lingering anyway. We do have to make it through here and confront Sans. And find out what else is different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is finally out! Sorry for the wait, it's been a hassle to get my computer replaced. Still haven't quite resolved that situation yet, so we're gonna stick with weekly updates for now. Sorry about that! Thank you for being patient.
> 
> I love Papyrus. He is, hands down, perhaps the most lovable character in the entire game. Choosing fight in the Genocide Route when confronted by him was so hard, I can't even... well, anyways, I hope I did him justice. He's not a particularly hard character to write, but messing him up (or going over the top to the point he becomes two-dimensional) is actually really easy.
> 
> Next chapter isn't Sans in the Past!, but I hope you all like it anyways. It's been very interesting to work on, and I think it helps add depth to the story, even if it doesn't especially advance the plot.
> 
> Thank you for reading! See you next time!


	9. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a departure from the norm, I know, but it and the next few after it are some of my favorites.

The Underground really was quite small, once you got used to it.

Asriel knew that better than many others: when he was young and still in awe of the natural beauty of their underground home, he had made it his goal to explore every nook and cranny of the small world behind the Barrier. It was easy: it had taken him less than a day to discover almost every secret that the Underground had to offer, except those that the Lab in Hotland must contain. The Royal Scientist… was there a Royal Scientist? The thought seemed to slip from his mind as soon as it had entered. All he knew is that he had been told not to enter the Lab, that it was dangerous.

He had broken in anyway, one day. There was nothing inside. A totally empty area without even a slight trace of anybody having ever been there. He felt guilty at having broken a command from his parents, and after he had told them, crying in shame, they had resolved to punish him somehow. Not that they had ever done it: after watching his nervous breakdown at the very mention of a spanking, they had let him off the hook. Still, Asriel had not broken another rule from that day forth.

He knew that he shouldn’t break any rules now more than ever. As the prince of all monsters, it was his duty to maintain a respectable reputation. To fail to do so was to bring shame on his entire family in front of the entire Underground. At least, it was in his eyes. His mom and dad had told him that it was not so big a deal as that (though they did warn him against ever breaking a rule again), but still, he could not disobey.

But if that was what he truly thought, why was he planning on breaking a rule right then?

He had only been three years old when the monsters had migrated from Home to New Home, and he couldn’t remember a thing about the old Home of monsterkind. He had never gone there on his journeys through the Underground because his mom had warned him against it. She had just vaguely said that it was dangerous for a child to go there alone, and when he had begged her to come with him, she had just laughed it off and said that she was busy ruling the kingdom for his father while he was out tending to his flowers. He had smiled at that too: Dad had always loved his flowers, and in his heart, they came second only to family. And friends. And the rest of the monsters. Really, they came last to everything else, but he loved them nonetheless. Asriel had always enjoyed helping with the gardening when his dad asked him to. It was relaxing, menial labor that took no toll on the brain. And he got to be around one of his favorite people in the whole world.

Asriel supposed he could be called “too attached” to his parents, but he had no other real friends. He was very awkward around people, even those who he was close to. He might say something that he hadn’t meant to say out loud, or something he hadn’t meant to phrase as he had, or something that would unnerve other people and make them look at him funny. The only people he had managed to hold conversation with were his mom, his dad, and Uncle Gerson, the old turtle that visited every other week for dinner. Other children were weirded out by him, and adult monsters treated him with too much respect than was comfortable for the young prince.

All that Asriel really had going for him (in his own mind, at least) was a spirit of adventure. He had spent his younger years traveling the Underground searching for new experiences, and when that had grown old, he had turned his desire for adventure to more… intellectual exercises. He had become an avid reader since he had learned, consuming book after book in search of a distraction. He would read anything, from the history books filling the “librarby” in Snowdin, scientific essays on the nature of the multiverse, and even a few human books that had eventually come to reside in the dump in Waterfall. It was those books, from a surface world that had forgotten monsters, that most interested him, though they were always in terrible condition and mostly unreadable. His favorite of those was a series called the _Lord of the Rings_ : someone had thrown away a set that was in almost pristine condition, probably by accident. It was a story of adventure, with wizards and warriors facing off against the monstrous forces of evil. It was interesting that humans still thought, after all this time, that monsters were their enemies. All monsterkind had ever wanted was peace.

But the stories about adventure that Asriel read only served to stoke the flame of his wanderlust, his urge to explore the unknown. And there had only been one place that he hadn’t been before in the entire Underground, and it was the Ruins of Home.

He had packed for the journey in secret: he knew his parents might overreact if they found him getting ready to leave. It wasn’t too far, and he’d be going most of the way by boat: the River Person was unlikely to tell anyone Asriel had taken his boat. But still, he took a tupperware container of snail pie and a bar of chocolate in case he got hungry. There were also a few books, in case he got bored. He also brought extra clothes, in case he got dirty. He didn’t really know what to expect from the Ruins, but he wanted to be prepared in any case.

Asriel knew he couldn’t leave before his parents got up: they would worry excessively over him if they found he wasn’t in his bed in the morning. So he would have to go after his mother had finally finished with his daily lessons. He was so certain that he would actually be punished this time if he got caught. And he didn’t want to be punished, no matter what happened.

The time finally came in the late afternoon, after his mother had given him a lecture on the overpopulation that was threatening the Underground. “And it will only get worse,” she said, pointing at the massive map of the Underground that was spread over the table. “Not only is the inevitable rise in population as our natural resources are used up going to lead to a crisis as the Underground becomes more crowded, but within a hundred years, the water level in Waterfall will have fallen to such levels that aquatic monsters will be forced to leave their homes and migrate to aquariums here in the capital. Now, your father and I will likely not be there to help deal with the issues, so you will be forced to-“

“Tori, stop boring our son with all this talk,” Dad’s voice rumbled from behind him. Asriel turned and saw his dad standing in the hallway, fully dressed in his royal cloak and crown. His face looked tired, but also happy, which seemed to be his default state. Asriel had only seen his father truly angry once before, when he had to depose the governor of Snowdin for extortion. The poor rabbit monster had thrown himself off a bridge in Hotland shortly after that, according to rumor. He forced himself back to the present. He wanted to hear what his dad was going to say next. “He’s too young to hear about this sort of thing.”

“Asgore, I thought we had already had this argument: Asriel needs to learn what is expected of him when he becomes king. I hope as much as you do that that isn’t anytime soon, but we’ve been putting off his royal education for far too long,” Mom insisted. Asriel shuddered at the thought of the argument: it had gone on for nearly a week, and Dad had almost been kicked out of his own house before agreeing reluctantly that Asriel needed to learn his duties. He had probably just said that to end the argument.

“Come on, dear, he’s just a kid. Waterfall’s still going to be there in twenty years or so,” Dad replied with a chuckle. Mom made as if to argue, raising a finger like she did whenever she wanted to make a point, but sighed and lowered her hand. “He’s still got his youth to go out and explore the Underground. I know that’s all that Gaster did when I first met him, and he was almost an adult then.”

“Who’s… that’s funny. I can’t remember what you just said,” Mom said, frowning in confusion. Asriel was confused too. He had just heard a name, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He just shrugged and looked back at the map. It was even larger than the table itself.

“I was just telling you about- never mind.” Dad seemed disturbed for some reason, but he continued to speak. “But still, it’s not right for a kid to be cooped up like this all the time. That’s what adulthood’s for.”

“Oh really? And where were you slaving away in a tiny cubicle today, mister ‘chained to my desk’?” There was an element of sarcasm in Mom’s voice.

“I was out in Snowdin visiting the bar.”

“Oh? In the morning?” Mom raised an eyebrow disapprovingly.

“Yes. It’s a great place to talk to one’s subjects on equal terms. And you really should meet the bartender. He’s _on fire_. I met his son, too. He seems to be a good kid, but he’s kinda quiet. Though, he doesn’t really have a mouth, so…”

“You’re not _supposed_ to be equals with your subjects,” Mom grumbled. “You have to be nice to them and respect them, but being drinking buddies with them…”

“Don’t worry, I only had a dozen pints. I have a great stomach for beer. Plus, I had three burgers there to take the edge off, so it’s like I didn’t drink at all.”

Mom sighed. “All right, Asriel, I guess your lesson is over. What did we learn about today?”

“Overpopulation and resource management!” Asriel said cheerfully. He realized the severity of their situation in the Underground, but he had never felt crowded himself, nor had he ever been lacking for anything he wanted. Then again, he was a prince. He receive special treatment or something

Dad laughed. “Seriously, Tori? We’ve been down here for nearly a thousand years now, and we’ve never had to worry about any of that. Calm down for now.”

Mom made a pointed attempt at ignoring Dad. “Very good, Asriel! Now, run along now. I have to have some serious words with your father about his style of ‘ruling’.” Dad looked at her guiltily, before bowing his head in acceptance.

Asriel was off like a flash. He barely stopped to grab the pack in his rooms that he had been preparing for this very day before he was out the door, running through the streets of New Home to the elevator down to Hotland. Although he had heard complaints about the names Dad had named everything, Asriel rather liked them. They were short, simple, and self-explanatory. He only wished that they were more dramatic. Like “Megavolcano” or “Ultra-City Two: the Sequel”. Those sounded like great names to him, but he wasn’t the one to name everywhere in the Underground. At least he got to name his own attacks.

When he finally reached the elevator, he was forced to wait for several minutes. There was a lot of traffic between the relatively-isolated New Home and the rest of the Underground, and monsters were always waiting to cram onto the single elevator that connected the capital to the rest of the Underground. It seemed remarkably… inefficient. He didn’t understand why they didn’t just add more. One more thing to fix once he was king, he guessed.

When the elevator finally opened to disgorge a seemingly outraged slime-creature and a rather annoying dog, Asriel jumped inside and waited for the rest of the elevator to fill up. It was rather cramped: he was trapped between a chilldrake heading back to Snowdin and a vulkan that really wanted to give Asriel a hug, much to his dismay. He was freaked out by physical contact, though he had no clue why. It was just part of his anti-social tendencies, he guessed.

When the elevator disgorged him in the brand-new apartment complex in Hotland, he was off again in the burning heat. Hotland’s name was very self-explanatory, since the main feature of the entire environment was the heat. It was so hot that you could see it in the air, waves of warmth waiting to surround you and burn your skin and your lungs. It was even worse for Asriel: not only was he covered in fur and unable to sweat normally, but his mother insisted on him only wearing striped sweaters because everywhere in the Underground except for Hotland was usually at least slightly chilly. He wished at the very least that he could have a decent shirt that didn’t have such long sleeves.

Running through Hotland was painful. The idea for installing new elevators to expedite travel through the hellish area had been approved by Asgore, but construction on the elevators had not started yet. So instead, Asriel was forced to walk cautiously down the ancient, crumbling staircases that connected the levels of Hotland together. It wouldn’t be so terrible if not for the intense heat threatening to overwhelm him. Or the knowledge that a single misstep would lead to almost certain death. He was relieved when he reached the bottom, even if the staircase did deposit him outside the blindingly white Lab. He walked right past the sterile, empty building and down to the river that flowed throughout the entirety of the Underground.

“Tra la la.” He was greeted by a figure in a gray cloak standing on a boat in the middle of the river. Asriel had attempted to look into the cloak before, but he hadn’t seen anything aside from shadows. Dad said the the River Person appeared almost a century after the monsters were trapped Underground, and since then, any suspicion that they might have been a human had been discarded in the light of their incredible age. “Where are you going, prince of this world’s future?”

“Howdy!” Asriel said cheerfully. The River Person mostly spoke in nonsense, so he had always found it easy to talk to them. “I’m heading over to the- to Snowdin. Would you mind taking me there?”

“I would be honored to take you there if that were truly your destination,” said the River Person mysteriously. Asriel froze in shock. How had they known? “Now, let’s try this again: Where are you going, vessel of hopes and dreams?”

“I- I was going to the Ruins,” Asriel stuttered. “Please don’t tell my parents!” he added quickly, desperately. “I don’t want to be punished!”

The River Person smiled. Or maybe not. Asriel just got the feeling they had smiled. “Why didn’t you say so, my dear flower? I would not derail fate, like some others I know. Come with me now, beloved memory: I know a shortcut.” And for the first time Asriel had ever seen, the River Person hopped off their boat and began walking to the wall behind him. Asriel looked on in confusion as the River Person reached out a hand, wrapped in so many bandages he could not even see the skin. Or lack thereof.

Hesitating, Asriel seized the hand and followed the River Person. And within instants, he was standing right outside the doorway to the Ruins, shivering in the cold of Snowdin. He had no clue what had happened. He looked up at the cloaked figure in amazement. “How did you _do_ that? That was so awesome!”

“I learned it years ago, but I can only do it here because of a… friend,” the River Person said. There was an uncomfortable emphasis on friend, almost as if they did not truly mean it. “Normally, you would only meet him in a hundred years or so, but now, I’d say you meet him in three.”

“Woah…” Asriel said in wonder. Was the River Person omniscient? Sometimes, he thought they were. Maybe that was what drove them to the brink of insanity. Though they didn’t sound quite as insane right now. Why was that. “Who’s this friend? What’s his name?”

The River Person froze. “Tra la la,” they sang after a long pause. “I’m afraid I must get back to my boat. This conversation has been delightful, I assure you, but I must go. Goodbye for now, dear child. When you come back, I be will at the Hotland dock. It is important that I be there when the others come. You will understand.” And with that, they turned and walked off into the trees.

Asriel attempted to follow, but the River Person was gone. He shivered, and not from the cold. What was _that_ about? He turned back to the massive door to the Ruins. It was much larger than he was, but it was propped open by a small wooden wedge jammed between it and the ground. He had feared that he wouldn’t be able to get in.

The first several corridors he walked through were boring. So much for a grand adventure. He was beginning to give up hope by the time he reached a grand staircase leading up to a room above. He ascended without a second thought, just glad to escape from the monotony of the passages below and-

Found himself in a near-exact replica of his house. He stared around in shock, then rushed off to check everything. Everything was the same: the kitchen, his room, Mom’s room, Dad’s room. It all looked exactly the same, aside from the obvious disuse. At first, he wondered why the furniture had been left behind, but then he remembered how hard a time he had had walking down the steps in Hotland. To walk up those, holding a couch, seemed impossible even for the beefiest of monsters.

Outside the house was a dead tree, surrounded by a blanket of red leaves. He crinkled playfully in the leaves, laughing in happiness. Home already looked more vibrant, more fun than New Home did, despite him having only seen the red leaves and the purple walls. He wondered why monsters had ever left. _Probably overpopulation and a lack of resources_ , he thought, surprised at how much of his mother’s lecture he had actually absorbed.

He wandered backwards through the Ruins, slightly confused. All the puzzles were facing the wrong way. Why were they not angled to face the impassable door, in case something managed to get in? They looked fun, though. He guessed he could do them for real once he was heading back. For now, he just admired the design. They were traditional monster traps with a unique twist: the the trick usually depended on a hint or seeing another part of the room. He liked those kinds of puzzles, rather than the weird laser-based stuff in Hotland. He just really didn’t like Hotland. _At all_. If it were possible, he’d have it cut out of the Underground and hurled into that place beneath the dump that he hadn’t dared explored for fear of never finding his way back. That was a grand adventure for when he was older.

The monsters in the Ruins were certainly… unusual. He saw a whimsun on his journey through once, but it fled as soon as he lifted his hand to saw hello. Later, he ran into a line of moldsmols, who he had merely stepped over. Loox was certainly weird, so he just sort of… avoided the eye-monster. As for the migosps… they were legendary throughout the Undergound for only being dangerous when they were with other monsters, most of whom were easy to convince to stop attacking. So when Asriel was confronted by two migosps who wanted to steal from him, he just ran.

He found good friends in the froggits, however. They might be a little weird, but they were also nice and really understanding. Asriel didn’t understand what a “full screen” was either, so he just nodded when the frog had said F4 stood for “four frogs”. And he didn’t understand how pressing “X” was supposed to skip conversations, but he had agreed that it was rude.

It had taken him forever to reach the start of the Ruins, and he had been mostly… disappointed. Yes, the aesthetic was cool, and the froggits were great, but he wasn’t interested in the spider families trapped within and could care less about some of the puzzles. And after he had made it all the way, risking punishment, he had found a plot of grass. Empty, except for the aforementioned plot of grass.

It was almost enough to make him cry, but he struggled to keep down the tears. Instead, he laughed. He had wasted an afternoon on this. He had probably disappointed his parents, and definitely shamed them by disobeying their direct command. He just plopped down on the grass and opened his bag, pulling out that piece of snail pie that he had been saving.

As he was scarfing down his meal (he realized that he had forgotten a fork, so he had to use his hands), he realized something even more funny: maybe the destination didn’t matter, only the journey. That made him laugh even harder: the journey was as much a disappointment as the destination. There weren’t many great secrets hidden in the Ruins, only forgotten monsters that no one cared enough about to free from their own miniature prison inside of the much larger prison the Underground was. It was downright hysterical.

He was laughing his heart out so much that he almost missed the sudden noise from the other room. He stopped, heart pounding in his chest. Maybe there was more in the Ruins than he had seen? He didn’t know what it was. He waited for a little, listening for another noise, but nothing. He quietly resumed eating his pie, ears still straining to hear another noise.

He was ready to dismiss it as just his overactive imagination when he finally heard something else. It sounded faint, like a cry for help. Asriel pushed himself to his feet and stood up. There was _definitely_ a noise that time. He rushed for the next room. How hadn’t he noticed it before? “It sounds like it came from over here…” he said to nobody in particular as he ran.

He rounded a corner and saw someone lying on the ground on their face, not moving. “Oh!” he said in a loud voice, terrified. He sprinted to them, whispering under his breath “Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no…” He slid the last couple of feet on his knees to their side, looking at them quickly. They appeared to be a kid, around his age: they were wearing a similar striped sweater to his own. He shook them, whispering almost to himself, “Hey… please get up… please…”

They groaned, pain evident in their voice. He looked at them more closely. Their brown hair obscured their face, but their body… their sweater was torn and stained red in places, and they were lying in a very faint indentation in the dirt around them. Almost as if they had…

“You’ve fallen down, haven’t you…” he asked in a quiet voice. If they had fallen down, he didn’t want to think about the implications. “Are you okay?” There was only another pained moan in response. Asriel hurried to help them sit up against his own body. Their face… it was black and blue all over, but despite that, there was something about them that Asriel couldn’t quite place. “Here, get up…” He swung their arm over his shoulder, holding them tight to himself. Their arm was limp at first, but their hand almost instantly grabbed his sweater. He shivered at that: Mom would not be happy that he had gotten his sweater dirty. Then he stood up, helping them to their feet gently. Holding them in his arms, he started off towards the end of the corridor.

He heard them mumble something. He inclined his head to hear them better. In a low voice, filled with pain, he could barely hear them say, “I- I’m Caroli- Chara. My name is Chara.” They winced as he helped them turn the corner. They had some broken ribs in addition to their superficial injuries, as well.

“Chara, huh?” he replied in a soft, soothing voice. They were so close that their smell overwhelmed him. It was like the trees in Snowdin, combined with a faintly metallic scent that disturbed Asriel for some reason. But it was still nice. “That’s a nice name.” They were crossing the room with the plot of grass now, slowly. Asriel was realizing it was taking even more strength just to support them, but they weren’t very heavy. In fact, they were incredibly light in his arms, and thin too, as if they were a skeleton monster wearing skin. He didn’t want to dwell on why they were so bony. He just wanted to distract them from their pain.

“My name is Asriel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I know this doesn't contribute a whole lot to the story, but honestly, Asriel is one of my favorite characters to write in this story. I can just pour so much of myself into him that I'm almost just taking myself whole-cloth and stitching it into the story. Of course, Chara also had a lot of me in them... but I like to think that Asriel is the less-depressed part of me that has a love for life.
> 
> Also, the riverman (or is it the riverwoman? It doesn't matter) in this fic just has so much I can do with him/her/them, with what I've kinda already established. They don't play at the most major part in the story, but when I can get them in, it goes pretty well.
> 
> I've hit the difficult part of writing this fic: the intermediate period. You all haven't read it yet, but I'm a few chapters ahead and writing gets hard. I'm determined to finish this thing (I have so many ideas for shorts after this), but writing's hard. Once I make it to Hotland, however... well, that's when the real fun begins.
> 
> See you in the next one!


	10. Breakdown

I love dogs. They’re fluffy and adorable and so nice and love you no matter what. They’re just the best animal ever to have existed. If I had had one, life on the surface might have been bearable. I honestly always feel terrible when you kill them.

But seriously: you don’t have to pet them fifty times!

Lesser Dog’s neck stretches off into oblivion, scraping against the roof of the cavern and then burying its head deep into the snow at its feet. Its sword and shield lie abandoned to its sides, and it sits on the ground, wagging its tail violently. You have long since given up trying to pet the dog, as it’s head is now unreachable. Yet still, you persist in this sorry excuse for a battle, refusing to finally SPARE the dog so we can walk away. I don’t have the faintest idea why.

Why are you sad? Don’t say you aren’t! We share the same body and SOUL, you know! I know what you’re feeling when you let me. And sometimes when you don’t.

Finally, sighing miserably (for some reason) you spare the beast. It lumbers off into the distance, it’s incredibly long neck trailing behind it. It takes almost a minute for the head to finally appear from out of the snow, panting happily as it is dragged away by its body.

I know monsters are made of magic and all, but sometimes, it’s just ridiculous.

You finally make your way over to that strangely discolored patch of snow, where you know a lever is hidden. It makes no noise when you pull it, which is upsetting to you, so… *clears throat* Click!

What? You were okay with it before you realized it was me making the noise for you.

Oh, well. You walk away from the hidden switch, only to hear something in the trees behind you. You turn, only to realize your SOUL has been pulled out of your chest, faintly illuminating the fallen snow. Suddenly, Icecap appears!

Jerry came too.

You smile as you hit Icecap with your toy knife, causing their hat to loosen on their head. They shudder in response. Most monsters retain full functionality until they are reduced to only a small fraction of their HP, but injuring them can still weaken them some. You still shudder at the euphoric rush of pleasure coursing through your body as you cause pain to someone else.

You’re really messed up. You know that?

Even I don’t like killing people. Not… anymore, at least…

“I just loooove my hat, okay?” they say, hurling chunks of ice-bullets at you which you dodge with ease. They were a little difficult to dodge the first time around, but now they just seem lackluster in the face of other attacks. Like Sans’ first attack. That thing was HELL to learn to avoid, you know?

“Wow, you guys SUCK at this,” Jerry says, to everybody’s chagrin. You and Icecap exchange looks, then dash away from Jerry when he isn’t looking. When you finally stop, you turn to search for Jerry, but he’s nowhere in sight. You only have a few minutes before he makes his way back, though. You turn to Icecap to resume the fight.

“What a great hat! (Mine)” they say happily as they summon forth lines of ice to catch your SOUL. These are even easier to dodge, if you’ve got any sense of rhythm. Fortunately, you do, so we don’t have to depend on me to help you with this attack.

Heck yeah I’ve got rhythm! I tried my hand at music, and I wasn’t the worst in the world. I was getting pretty decent at the guitar while I was down here. Asriel found me one in the dump for my thirteenth birthday. I was _so_ happy I actually kissed him!

Wait. Don’t tell anyone I did that.

But as to the guitar, maybe one day, we can find one and I’ll show you! Me and Asriel (who was really good at piano) were working on this piece we called “Undertale,” kinda based off the whole story of monsterkind. It was going great, up until I… we…

It’s not like I’d get a chance to show you anyway… we’re just going to destroy the world again…

…

Anyway… it’s your turn now…

You’re both celebrating Jerry’s disappearance. But as Icecap is looking away, you try to steal Icecap’s hat… and succeeded (it melts in your hands)! With their hat gone, Icecap begins to… change. Their normally humanoid body collapses into the form of a miserable block of Ice.

“What’s the point…” they say, not even bothering to attack. It smells like frozen despair.

You inform Icecap that it still looks fine. “Hmm… hats are for posers,” they say, suddenly okay with their identity. You glance off into the forest. It’s distant, but you can still make out the floating form of Jerry making his way towards you. You SPARE the block of Ice and begin running, not wanting to be anywhere in the vicinity of that… Jerry.

Blinded by your desire to escape, you cross a small bridge during your flight and end up face-to-snout with two massive, hooded dogs brandishing axes taller than you are. They look… dangerous, even after having encountered them countless times.

“What’s that smell?” one says. “(Where’s that smell?)” says the other. If you didn’t already know which was which, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one had said what. “If you’re a smell…” “(…identify yoursmelf!)” Then the dogs wander aimlessly across the plateau, sniffing and smelling for the source of the smell, before coming to a stop before you – the likely origin of the scent. “Hmm… there’s that weird smell…” one says. “It makes me want to eliminate.” “(…Eliminate YOU!)” You feel your SOUL be dragged out of your body into a battle with the Dogi! Naturally the best thing to do in this instance would be…

…to roll around on the ground!

Normally, I’d say this was stupid, but hey, whatever works…? It makes you smell like a weird puppy. Probably.

You like Papyrus and all, but Doggo didn’t get the memo to not attack “prisoners,” so you doubt that the Dogi did either. Your best option is to do what you always do: act like a filthy animal.

“No. 2 Nuzzle Champs ’98!!” “(Of course we were second,)” the dogs say as they swing their axes towards your SOUL. You manage to move it just in time through a tiny hole between their axes that is shaped like a heart. Aw… that’s _heart_ warming.

What? Mo- Toriel liked puns. I guess I picked it up from her.

It strikes you just how old Dogamy and Dogaressa must be. If they got second place in that contest… which was before Asgore and Toriel found me… wow. They’re pretty old for dogs. They’d be, like, seven hundred in dog years. At least.

The dogs sniff at you again… after rolling in the dirt, you smell all right! “What!? Smells like a…” “(Are you actually a little puppy!?)” they say, but that doesn’t stop Dogamy from barking out heart-shaped bullets in your general direction. You manage to dodge them, but they land on Dogaressa’s mouth with a sickening sound you take for dogs kissing. The dogs think you might be a lost puppy. You know the next step in the process, and it isn’t honestly a bad one. So you reach out a hand and pet Dogamy.

“Wow! Pet by another pup!” Dogamy says in amazement, wagging his tale in pleasure. “(Well. Don’t leave me out!)” Dogaressa growls, but in an expectant way. You manage to dodge their axes again. Then you pet the Dogaressa. “What about me…………..” Dogamy whines, but Dogaressa practically purrs, “(A dog that pets other dogs… Amazing!)” The Dogs’ minds have been expanded. Your SOUL slowly floats back to your body.

“A dog that pets other dogs???” “(A new world has opened up for us…)” the dogs say as the tension in the situation drains away. “Thanks, weird puppy!” Dogamy calls as they walk away, waving back at you. You barely overhear a snippet of a conversation: “Papyrus WAS wrong. There wasn’t any human out this way.” “(Maybe he thought the puppy was a human?)” You feel suddenly guilty. Papyrus had sent the dogs to take you back to Snowdin, hadn’t he? He’s so nice. But the dogs weren’t trained to capture humans, but to kill them. That was really… sad.

Just when the dogs disappear from view, you realize you should have asked them what happened to Asgore and Toriel. Damn. Well, nothing to it but continuing on.

The first Xs and Os puzzle. Very simple. Papyrus is usually waiting just beyond this point, asking if you had eaten his spaghetti, but now, he’s doing serious business on the other side of the forest from you. You wonder what he is doing. Hadn’t he mentioned Undyne…? This whole situation feels wrong. But then again, we _did_ somehow screw up the timeline. I think it was bringing Sans through the deletion of the universe with us.

I get this feeling that somehow it was our fault Sans somehow survived past the End. Not that we screwed up destroying everything, but because we had done it too often. Because you wanted – no, _needed_ – to go back the the world you destroyed. I don’t know how he did it: I would’ve noticed him in the Void if some variation of him had survived there.

Why are you so quiet? I want your input here. How do you think he did it?

I can tell when you’re hiding something. Your entire mind is blanketed in those… shadows that you get when you don’t want me to learn about something. I don’t know how you do that, but it sort of gives something away. That mental barrier only tells me that there’s something you don’t want me to know. So what are you hiding? Something about… Sans?

Oh my God you _didn’t_.

You… you _knew_ about Sans, didn’t you? And you let him… you _hid_ him from me and let him do _this_ to my world! He… he screwed up _everything_! The Ruins… Home wasn’t full of spiders and _death_ and dust! Snowdin wasn’t fighting off _Undyne_ until _he_ came!

Don’t you dare argue with me! You’re a dirty freaking liar! The Underground was… peaceful! Happy! Everyone was living, and for the most part, living well! Your so-called “friends” were struggling, but at least they were happy! My family was separated, but at least they were alive and well!

Asriel was alive!

Asriel was…

…Flowey…

W-we never…

…we should have…

…SAVED him.

B-but you never _tried_ to.

Y-you just KILLED HIM

Y O U  M U R D E R E D  M Y  B R O T H E R

A N D  L A U G H E D  A S  H E  D I E D

…b-but then…

…when everyone was dead…

…and I made everything okay…

…and there was no more harm we could do…

…you…

…you wanted to go back…

…and D O  I T  A L L  A G A I N

F O R E V E R

O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D  O V E R  A N D

…over… and…

We’re still in Snowdin.

You’re lying in a snowbank, clutching at your head in pain and crying. The O and X puzzle lies unfinished beside you. The spikes are still up, blocking the way forward.

We can’t reset.

We can’t fix anything.

We can’t _change_ anything.

The only thing we can do is keep moving forward.

…I’m not going to comfort you, you know. You’ve killed my brother, even if it was in another timeline. Even if he wasn’t himself, but a SOULless abomination. A mockery to his memory. His memory. That’s all I-I have left of him. A locket and a memory.

A locket that I don’t even have and a beautiful memory. And a flower intent on genocide.

…I’m not going to apologize for putting you in so much pain. You deserved it. You deserve more of it. But… I’m no better. Even if you were the one to kill everyone, it was my idea. All I wanted was for the pain to stop. The pain of remembering a person that I loved be killed because of me. My mistake. Because I’m the idiot.

The Void didn’t help. I was just alone with my thoughts for all eternity. Until you wanted to remake the world. I thought… with your SOUL… I could do something different. Make things better. Be happy.

I was wrong.

All I got was your life – the life you had on the surface, with friends who loved you and protected. I was Mom’s child again, but not really. I-I roamed the world with a photograph of friends I never truly knew in my pocket. And it _hurt_.

It didn’t matter that I was alive again. All I wanted was to SAVE Asriel. And all- all I c-could do w-was kill him. B-bring him lasting p-peace in d-death.

I-I’m crying, Frisk.

You-you’re my only f-friend left, y-you know? I’ve l-lost too many. I-I-

I just want to die.

I just…

…

But…

But I-I don’t want to.

I DON’T WANT TO BE DEAD!

All I really want to do right now is _wake up_.

I don’t like this dream anymore. It’s always been more of a nightmare.

But- but I’m not asleep, am I?

This is reality.

I’m not going to wake up and find Asriel- Asriel sleeping next to me, and Mom making us a butterscotch-cinnamon pie, and Dad laughing the way he always does. I’m not going to wake up.

This is my life.

I’m just a ghost trapped inside someone else’s head. A ghost that can destroy reality if you become powerful enough, but what’s the point? I don’t even have a SOUL or a body or even a mind, not really. I’m just a memory of a useless child that refuses to die, even when I should have.

And you- you, who murdered my family- you, who committed _genocide_ in my name, but for your pleasure- you are my only friend in the entire world.

I’m laughing, but these are not tears of joy.

No, don’t try to comfort me, Frisk. I’m not worth it. You can’t even hug me.

You don’t even actually care, not really. You’re just going through the motions.

Come on. We’ve got to get back through this screwed up world and find a way home.

If there is one.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

In the next area, another snow-Sans stands at ease, skeletal hands in hoodie pockets made of snow. This one, however, was obviously animate.

“Heh. Fancy meeting you here, kiddo. I’ve actually been waiting for quite a while, you know, but it’s been pretty okay. I was able to catch a quick dirt-nap while you were out. Because, you know, I’m technically dead.”

Okay, _Sans_ , what the hell are you doing here?

“Just _chilling_ , you know.” He shrugged without even taking his hands out of his pockets. How lazy. “Actually, if I were to be completely honest, I’m here because I saw that you were having a mental breakdown. It sounded pretty _crazy_.”

You- you _listened_ to that!? That was private!

“Well, it was on a public road. Anyone passing by could have heard you. Not that anyone takes the road, though. I wonder why. It might have something to do with all the puzzles my bro has set up.”

But- but you-

“Yes, I know, violation of privacy and all that, and I guess I’m sorry. But now I know you _understand_ me, Chara. You know what I’ve gone through. You know what it’s like for someone you love to die, and it’s _your fault_. Well, and the kid’s, technically.” He sort of beckons to you, once again without removing his hands from his pockets. “Though, if my memory serves me correctly, you were completely on-board with the whole ‘murder everyone’ idea the first time. I’m glad you’ve seen the light of not being a fucking murderer.”

You can’t just intrude on a private moment like that!!! What if- what if we were to walk in on you and- and Papyrus spilling your guts to each other?! Would you like that!?

“Well, I don’t think there’d be that much to spill, to be honest,” Sans says, closing his eyes briefly. “We kinda don’t have internal organs and all that.”

YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

“Woah, woah, _chill out_ , Chara. Yes, I understand what you’re saying. I’m picking up what you’re putting down. Figuratively, of course. I wouldn’t want to bend over that far. Yeah, I guess it was a private moment and all that, but I kinda started ignoring the whole ‘private’ part years ago, back when I was new to this world.”

What do you mean by-

“I’m not gonna answer that, and you know it. Look, I’m only here to extend an olive branch. After your little… soul-searching session, I think we’re finally ready to give this whole ‘friendship’ thing a whirl. Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Sans! You killed us so many times! How could I ever be your friend?’ But then again, that’s true of almost everyone in the Underground, isn’t it? Look: we understand each other more than anyone else in the entire world, maybe the entire multiverse, even if we fall on the opposite sides of that understanding. So what’d’a say? Friends? Nah, we can’t be friends, can we? But can we at least agree not to try and murder each other?” He reached out a skeletal hand from his pocket, made of cold snow.

You start to reach out your hand, but Sans shakes his head, smile still wide on his face. “I don’t mean you, kid. I don’t think I’m going to ever be able to forgive _you_ for what you did to my brother. Well, maybe if it were only once, on accident, but he’s died more times than I can count at your dusty hands. I mean Chara.” His expression… softens? when he says my name. He lowers his hand and bows his head. “I’m deeply sorry, kiddo. I- I know why you came to Mount Ebott.”

WHAT.

“Look, I didn’t mean to find out, alright? We can talk about it later. This isn’t the safest place in the world to talk about any of this.” He points over at a tree behind him. Looking into the depths of its branches, you can barely make out… is that the lens of a camera, almost hidden by leaves? “Alphys sure was busy around here, back before the Underground split, and now… I’ll tell you at the King’s garden, alright? Then we should be safe to talk about whatever we want.”

But… how?

Sans’ smile turns sad. “Well, that’s another thing we can talk about later. A long story that I don’t particularly want Alphys to get her grubby claws on. I’ll be around. Just call my name if you want me. I’ll show, if it’s all that important. But in the meantime, I’ve got to go. Goodbye, for now.” And the snow-Sans collapsed into a useless pile of slush on the ground. You reach out your hand as if to stop him, but I tell you not to bother.

He… left us a lot to think about.

He knows why I came to Ebott, does he? Even YOU don’t know that. The only other person in the entire Underground who knows that was Asriel, and he’s… well, Sans couldn’t have learned it from him. The only real option is that he was watching me… before I fell… that, I find difficult to believe. And if it were true…

Does he know why _you_ came to Ebott? I don’t know that one. I don’t think even you know that one. Your memories of the surface are incredibly hazy, to say the least. Indecipherable. They don’t even really feel like your own, though you know they must be.

Those are the memories of a ten year old child, not of a magnificent savior or a sadistic serial killer. And you are both of those now.

Let’s… let’s move on.

The next puzzle was usually altered to look like Papyrus’ face, but now you finally get to see it in its unaltered form. It’s about the same level of difficulty, but the difference is enough to make it bearable, even enjoyable. When you finally solve the puzzle, it’s more satisfying than it ever has been since you first did it. I think I understand why Papyrus likes puzzles so much: I could’ve realized it sooner, if not for the repetition. We move on quickly after the puzzle is done: that camera is still watching us from the tree.

The next area usually hosts the multicolored tile puzzle that Alphys designed. I’m still positive that she did something to the puzzle here to make it as… simple as it was. That would fit her style, considering some of the other things she’s done to make your journey through the Underground survivable.

Now, the ground is bare, devoid of any puzzle that could stop you from advancing. You approach cautiously, still fearing a trap, but you make it to the other side of the area without difficulty. You wonder why the puzzle isn’t here. Maybe it has something to do with Sans, like all the other differences seem to be. He talked about Alphys earlier, didn’t he?

Lesser Dog’s station is once again surrounded by sculptures of snow-dogs, none of which are complete. It’s nice to see something familiar, at the very least. The faun monster also in the area offers it’s regular discussion on the dog’s actions, but you do nothing but walk over to the familiar SAVE star and SAVE right there. You’re beginning to feel exhausted from the journey, which is an unfamiliar sensation. Though usually, you aren’t walking around with a slash across your side and a hurt leg. Well, don’t worry: we’re almost the Snowdin yet. And then, we can sleep and eat and heal up. And then we can talk to Papyrus and figure out just what the hell is going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote this chapter while I was on vacation (which ended up being less relaxing and more working than I would have liked), but I think it still turned out alright.
> 
> And at this point, I think I can safely say that Chara is my favorite _chara_ cter (kill me now) in this fic. Not in Undertale (God bless you, Papyrus), but in this fic. They don't really get much characterization in the game aside from being a demon and "not really the nicest person."
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! See you in the next one!


	11. Underground

Asriel was basically carrying Chara in his arms by the time he reached the stairs. What little strength they had left had dwindled away on the short journey to the true entrance to the Ruins, and their breathing was shallow and pained. Asriel slowly lowered them from his arms, sitting them down on the steps where they could stay upright. “Hey, I’m gonna need you to stay awake for a moment. Can you do that?” They nodded their head, but Asriel could tell that they didn’t have much time. He wondered if they had even noticed he was a monster yet. They might think they were dreaming.

He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open quickly, sitting on the steps next to Chara. They leaned against him, mumbling into his chest, and he wrapped an arm around their tiny form. First, he dialed his mother, praying to anything out there that she would pick up. There were several rings, but then silence as nobody answered. Asriel suspected that that little white dog had stolen her phone again, but it was a terrible time. So instead, he called his dad.

*Ring* *Ring* *Ring* *Ring* *Ring* *Ring*

“Howdy! You have reached King Asgore’s phone. I’m probably in the garden or on a walk right now, so please leave a message, and I’ll call you back.” *Beep*

“Dad! Dad! It’s Asriel! I- I need help! I’m in the Ruins! I don’t r-really have time to explain why! Please, hurry!” he shouted into the receiver, praying that someone would overhear. Chara grumbled quietly against him at the noise, and he winced. He hung up in desperation.

Asriel was tempted to curse or scream or _something_. He had one other number on his phone, but he didn’t recognize it, so he didn’t even bother calling them. Instead, he turned back to Chara.

“Hey, you still awake?” he said soothingly, stroking their hair slowly. He heard a quiet grunt in response. A yes, he supposed. “That’s good. That’s very good.” Asriel had heard that injured people weren’t supposed to go to sleep, or something bad might happen. “Now, I’m gonna have to move you so I can stand up. You okay with that?” Another grunt. “Okay. I’m going to move you now.”

He slowly pushed them from his body, holding them lightly, but firmly, by the shoulders so they wouldn’t fall down the stairs. Painfully slowly, he lowered them to the step, praying that he wouldn’t hurt them. All they did was moan sleepily in response, and their already half-closed eyes began to slide shut. He grabbed their hand with force, but gently. “Hey, stay with me, alright? Stay determined.” He stood up slowly, still holding their hand. “Now, I’m gonna try something, alright? Just relax. Don’t try to fight it.”

Nervously, Asriel summoned green magic in his hand. It danced from fingertip to fingertip, like green lightning, sparks floating down onto Chara’s prone form. He wasn’t nearly as good at healing as his parents were, but they had been trying to teach him. He knelt down at their side on the steps as their eyelids finally closed. They looked… peaceful. He prayed that he wasn’t going to mess up. Slowly, cautiously, he moved his hand to their chest and let the green magic spark from his fingertips to their body.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then they shuddered, convulsing for several seconds, their breathing quickening but still shallow. Asriel held his breath, hoping above all hopes that he wasn’t making things worse. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what happened next. Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped.

After a moment, he opened an eye. Chara was lying motionless on the step. He panicked before he noticed that their chest was still rising and falling in rhythm. He sighed in relief. Then he saw the green sparks dancing across their body, their legs, their arms, their torso, their face, all of their many wounds. And slowly, but surely, the wounds began to heal: scratches and cuts closing, bruises fading. He had poured a lot of his magic into healing them, but he knew that he had not done nearly enough to erase all their wounds. He fell to the the step next to them, physically exhausted. He hoped that he had done enough to keep them alive, at the very least. The green sparks eventually dwindled off, until they disappeared completely.

“Hey, wake up, Chara,” he said softly, gently shaking them by their shoulders to wake them up. Slowly, their eyes fluttered open, revealing a deep crimson iris spiderwebbed with lighter lines of red. They were still unable to open completely, due to the not fully healed bruises on their face. Asriel barely manage to stop a gasp of surprise from escaping his mouth at the sight of their eyes. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I- I think I am,” they said in a voice smooth and silky – like chocolate. “Where- where am I?” they asked, blinking their eyes. Apparently, they were having a little trouble seeing with the Underground’s natural darkness and their damaged face.

“You’re in the Underground,” Asriel confided in Chara. “This is where monsters live.”

“Monsters?” Chara sounded confused, but tired. Asriel was painfully aware of the weakness evident in their voice. “Like, real monsters? Flesh-and-blood monsters?”

“Yep! Well, not flesh-and-blood, more magic-and-love. It’s kinda like…” Asriel realized he was struggling to think of a decent metaphor. He had grown up with the assumption that everyone knew what monsters were made of. How could he explain it to a hu- to someone who didn’t know already? “Well, we can find somebody who can explain it better than me. Are you hungry?”

“Hmm?” They were trying to push themselves upright, but they were struggling. Asriel had to support them as they sat up.

“Well, my mom made me some snail pie, and I still have a little left-“

“Snail pie?” they laughed in derision. Asriel froze: what were they laughing at? Had he said something stupid? “That sounds disgusting!”

“No it’s not! It’s really good!” Asriel replied, indignant. Snail pie was delicious, thank you very much!

“Whatever, weirdo. I’m not eating snails.”

“Well, I also brought a bar of chocolate, if that’s more your taste.” Their face immediately lit up at the sound of ‘chocolate.’

“Chocolate?” Chara said, turning to face him. “That sounds-” they stopped as they saw him fully for what he was. They screamed and tried to move away from him, but their legs still weren’t working properly. 

“Hey, hey, calm down, Chara. What’s wrong?” he asked, head tilted questioningly. _What had they seen? Is there something behind me?_

“You- you’re a- a _monster_!” They tried to scramble away, but as they tried to stand, they just fell forward as their knees gave out. Asriel rushed to catch them in his arms, and managed to grab them despite their wild flailing. “Get away from me!”

Asriel was stunned. Nobody had ever been afraid of him before. “So what if I’m a monster?” he said, emotion rising in his voice. Was it anger, or just more crying? _I- I save them, and they freak out at the sight of me?_ “You- you’re a _human_! If anything, I should be afraid of _you_!”

Chara had ceased struggling. Whether that was because of their weakness, or because they had finally gotten over it, he couldn’t tell. “W-Why would anyone be afraid of _me_? I-I’m weak. I’m _useless_. I- I can’t do anything to anyone.” Then they broke down and started crying into Asriel’s striped sweater. Asriel held them in confusion. _What’s going on?_

“Hey. Hey. It’s alright, Chara. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay.”

“N-no I’m not. I don’t _deserve_ to be okay. I- I-“

“Shh… you’re okay. You’re fine. Nothing’s going to happen to you.” Asriel had subconsciously started stroking Chara’s hair. “Y-you said you wanted some chocolate?” he asked, trying to think of a way to cheer them up.

They nodded, tears still streaming down their face. They looked considerably better, despite their face being red and wet from the crying. Asriel looked around for his bag, where he had kept his chocolate, and found it abandoned at the bottom of the stairs. “Can you wait here while I go get it?” Another nod. “Good. Now, I’m just going to run down the stairs really quick and go grab it. You wanna sit down?” They shook their head vigorously. “You’re gonna fall over the moment I let go of you.”

“Then don’t let go.” Asriel was almost surprised when he heard the words come out of their mouth. They were quiet, desperate words, tugging at his heartstrings with more than a simple request to not let them go.

“It’s gonna be hard to walk down these steps with you holding on to me like this. Come on. Let’s get you sitting down.”

“You promise you won’t leave me?” God, were all the words they said going to tug at Asriel like that? He didn’t know. He started slowly helping them off their feet, depositing them on the step beneath them lightly.

“I promise.” He let go of them fully and rushed down the steps, taking them three at a time. He grabbed his bag by the top and rushed right back up, sitting down again next to Chara. “See? I didn’t leave. I’m still right here.”

They smiled a little. “So… about this chocolate…”

“Give me a moment,” Asriel said, opening the bag. Among the books, the clothes, and the leftover snail pie was a single bar of chocolate from the surface. He had found it in the dump, in surprisingly good condition for being thrown away. In fact, the wrapper hadn’t even been opened yet. It was frankly a miracle that he had been able to find it in the first place. He pulled it out of the bag and opened the wrapper. “Here you go,” he said as he handed the whole thing to Chara.

“W-what? It’s yours. You should have some too,” said Chara, accepting the chocolate almost reluctantly.

“Nah. I’ve already eaten. Mom would say it’d spoil my appetite,” Asriel replied.

“But it’s yours,” they said matter-of-factly.

“And now it’s yours.”

They looked down, dumbfounded at the chocolate in their hand. Then slowly, cautiously, they nibbled on a corner. Asriel couldn’t help but smile as he watched their face relax almost instantly when the smooth, milky chocolate hit their tongue.

“So, it’s good then?” The only reply he got was a satisfied grunt as they tore into the chocolate. “I mean, it’s not as good as monster food for injuries, but it’s something to fill your stomach.”

“Monster food is different?” they asked between bites of chocolate.

“Well, yeah. It’s mostly made of magic, so it replenishes the SOUL more so than the body, but a healthy SOUL means a healthy body. At least that’s what Mom says.” He had started pulling out his leftover snail pie to finish off while Chara ate the chocolate bar.

“Why are you saying soul like that?” They had eaten almost half of the chocolate bar. Asriel was impressed: he wasn’t an especially fast eater, though he had been told he had a voracious appetite.

“Oh. Don’t you know what a SOUL is?”

“Only some religious mumbo-jumbo they taught me in church. Like the immortal soul goes to heaven if you’re a good little girl or shit like that.” Asriel winced at the language. Mom wasn’t going to be happy if he brought home Chara speaking like that.

“Well, down here, it’s got a different meaning. I could show you, if you’d like.”

“Show me? How?” They were obviously confused, but intrigued.

“Well… do you trust me?”

“Trust you? I just met you!” Chara laughed, but it seemed forced. Asriel frowned a little bit and felt a little embarrassed to be asking the human that question. “But… you did save my life. So yeah, I guess I trust you.”

Asriel was overjoyed, but he tried to keep it contained. He knew he probably did a very bad job of it. “Okay, then. You’re gonna feel a little tugging sensation, but it’s not going to hurt, alright?” They nodded, and Asriel stood up. It was usually better to be standing to do this sort of thing. He stepped onto the step in front of where they were sitting and extended his hand. Then, he made a motion as to pull something, like on a rope.

Then, following his hand motion, something came floating out of their chest. It was bright red, shaped like a heart, but not upside down like he had been expecting. Chara gazed on in awe. Asriel couldn’t help his jaw dropping.

“What… what is that?” Chara asked in wonder, feeling at their chest for a hole it had come out of.

“Th-that is your SOUL, the v-very culmination of your being,” Asriel said in astonishment. He’d never seen a colored SOUL before. He supposed it was a human thing. He pushed it back into their body quickly. He felt uncomfortable holding someone else’s SOUL in his hands. “Y-your SOUL starts off weak, b-but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV.” He regretted saying that almost immediately, but Chara laughed after a moment of silence. He tilted his head in confusion. “What’s so funny?”

Chara was still smiling when they answered him. “Well, you make it sound like we’re in a fucking video game, you know? ‘Cause LV stands for ‘level’, right?”

“Language!” Asriel muttered under his breath. Or thought he muttered, but judging by the expression on Chara’s face, he had said it a little more forcefully than he expected. He smiled weakly at them “Sorry. Force of habit. No, LV doesn’t stand for ‘level’, it stands for LOVE.”

“Love? Like, the emotion? How does that make your SOUL stronger?” They sounded confused, but then Chara must of seen Asriel’s sheepish expression. “Unless… it’s just another acronym, isn’t it?”

“Y-yeah…” Asriel whimpered, trying to avoid their eyes.

“How does two acronyms for the same thing make any sense? It’s like a stand in for a stand in. Shortening the shortened version. Kinda stupid, if you ask me.” There was a moments pause as Asriel was silently thanking the gods that they hadn’t asked- “What’s it stand for?”

He shuddered. “L-look, Chara, it’s n-not a happy thing to talk about. It might be best to j-just drop the topic, okay?” They looked disappointed, but they agreed. There was an awkward silence as Asriel was searching for something to say. “S-so. You feel up to moving yet?”

“If by that you mean I’m well enough to walk, I think so,” they said, frowning slightly. Asriel hoped he hadn’t somehow managed to offend them. That would be just like him, wouldn’t it? He stood up and offered them a hand. Hesitating, they accepted it, and he pulled them to their feet. He started leading them by the hand up the stairs and through the Ruins.

“Well, in that case, it might be a good idea to get a move on. I’m already going to be late getting home. My parent’s are going to _kill_ me!” He noticed Chara shudder at that, so he made a quick attempt to cover over that sentence. “You know, metaphorically. They wouldn’t hurt anybody for real. Golly, I don’t think they _could_ hurt anyone, even if they wanted to!”

“O-of course,” Chara said, a strange look creeping across their face. Was that… fear? Asriel couldn’t tell. He had never been good at reading people.

“Hey, Chara?” he said, stopping and turning to them “It’s going to be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen to you down here” He put a hand on their shoulder

“What’s your name?”

“What?” Asriel asked, dumbfounded. He hadn’t been expecting that question. “But- but I told you my name.”

“I know, but I was kinda in a lot of pain at the time. Would you mind telling me again?”

“Okay, sure thing, Chara,” he said happily. “My name is Asriel.”

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

“Howdy! You have reached King Asgore’s phone. I’m probably in the garden or on a walk right now, so please leave a message, and I’ll call you back.” *Beep*

“Dad! Dad! It’s Asriel! I- I need help! I’m in the Ruins! I don’t r-really have time to explain why! Please, hurry!” *Click*

Asgore’s face was grim as the message ended. It was… unfortunate… that he had not been able to find his phone until now. It would have saved him a whole evening of heartache.

He had had a wonderful day in Waterfall, talking with his old friend Gerson and resolving land issues between the Blooks and their new neighbor, a family of fish people who had just moved out from the city into the sparsely-populated Waterfall. It had been great: he had found a few good books in the dump, along with a new calendar that was still in passable condition, and he had renegotiated his snail deal with Papablook so he had to pay slightly less. Then he promptly wasted his new “wiggle-room” money betting on Thundersnail. Oh, well. It was, overall, a good day.

Then he came home.

The house was in shambles when he arrived, and his wife was hysterical. She claimed that Asriel hadn’t come for dinner, so she had looked around for him. But the more she searched, the less trace of Asriel she found. It turned out that the last person to have seen him was a tsundereplane that claimed that they hadn’t been watching the boy go to the river. Of course, when she had gone to confront the River Person, they were completely gone. Then she had started calling people about their son, but nobody had seen him all day anywhere but in New Home and Hotland. She had been worried sick about him: what if he had gotten lost in the city (“He grew up in the city, dear. It’s not that big”)? What if some other monsters had taken him for ransom (“Only humans would do that to a child, dear”)? What if he had fallen into Hotland’s lava (“He’s a smart boy, Tori. He wouldn’t do that”)? The more he listened to her various theories, however crazy they might be, the more scared he was. Where could he possibly have gone?

Then Asgore had found his phone.

Like an idiot ( _lumbering buffoon_ , his wife called him), he had once again forgotten his phone at home while out in the Underground. It was sitting on the nightstand, where he usually left it to charge for the night, and it had several missed calls. Most of them were from various monsters that wanted him to solve a dispute or fix something (one was even from the Royal Scientist, asking about funding for a new project), but it was one of the earlier ones that caught his attention.

Asriel had called him, begging for help.

He was in the Ruins, alone and afraid, if his tone was any indication. And Asgore had not been there to help him.

He stormed out of his room, head lowered in shame and anger. At himself, not anyone else. How could he be so _stupid_!? It was just his luck: just when everything was going perfectly after years of trying to pull it all together, something had to happen and upset _everything_. If it wasn’t his kingdom, it was his family; if it wasn’t his family, it was the damned royal scientist that no one else seemed to be able to remember; and if it wasn’t Gaster, it was the whole damn _kingdom_! When did it end?

“Tori,” he said darkly, glaring at his wife. He wasn’t truly angry with her, but he was never the most emotionally stable monster in the Underground. He had a tendency to take out his bad attitudes on others. That was part of the reason he took so much time to himself doing simple, mindless activities: it kept him happy, for the most part.

“What is it, Asgore? Did somebody find him??” she cried in a high voice that Asgore almost couldn’t tell was hers. When Toriel was this upset, you knew something was terribly wrong.

“We need to go to the Ruins. Now.”

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

Chara was lying on Asriel’s old bed, panting from exhaustion. They had been walking a long time, and considering the fall they had just taken, and their other assorted wounds, it was remarkable that they had managed to make it that far at all. Asriel looked up at them from where he was sitting on the floor. He had prodded them to try a bit of snail pie to bolster their HP a bit, but they had refused, laughing about HP. “It’s like we really are in a video game down here, aren’t we?” they had said in response.

Asriel didn’t understand all the talking about video games. His parents had never allowed him to play video games, saying that it would “rot his young mind” or something like that. He had no clue what video games and mind rotting had to do with each other, but if it were true, he wasn’t exactly in a rush to find out.

The walk back to the house in the Ruins was short and uneventful. He supposed that the monsters must have gone to bed for nighttime. Or whatever passed for nighttime Underground. Chara had also remarked on the absurdity of not knowing when it was night.

Chara was asking him all sorts of questions about the Underground, like if all the monsters were goats. “No, no, there’s all different kinds of monsters. We’ve also got ghosts, and frogs, and skeletons! Well, probably skeletons. I’ve heard Dad talking about them, but I haven’t seen one myself.”

“But you’re all monsters? You don’t hate each other for being different?”

“No, why would we? We’re all stuck under the Barrier together, so why fight? Besides, we might all look different, but at heart, we’re really all the same.”

“Really? Because where I’m from, humans hate each other because of the color of their skin or because they’re a different gender or all sorts of stupid reasons.”

“Woah. Humans have multiple skin colors? Like, I like your pale skin and all, but a purple human… or a green one… that’s too cool!”

“No, no, it’s not like that at all. They’re just… basically different shades of the same. Like darker or lighter.”

“And you _hate_ each other because of that?”

“Well, yes. And a lot of other reasons.”

“Like what?”

“Well, some people are sexist.”

“Sexist? What’s that?”

“You- you’ve never heard of sexism? You’re precious, Asriel. Never change.”

Asriel blushed when he heard his name said like that. “You still haven’t answered the question.”

Chara was quiet for a moment. “It’s like men hating women and women hating men. And both hating… those who aren’t either.” The room was quiet for a moment, before Asriel snorted in laughter. Chara turned to face him curiously.

“That’s- that’s _real_? That’s about as ridiculous as the whole skin thing!” He couldn’t keep himself from laughing. As he was coming out of his joy, though, he couldn’t help but see that Chara had sat up in the bed and turned away from him. “But that does remind me: do you have a particular pronoun you want me to call you? Or are you fine with ‘they’? I don’t know if that’s a common thing to ask up there, but down here, it’s considered polite.”

Chara looked astonished at his words. Asriel once again wondered if he had said something wrong. “Nobody’s- nobody’s ever asked me that before.” There were tears welling up in their eyes. “Ju-just call me ‘they’ for now, okay?” They looked as if they wanted to say something more, but they didn’t. Asriel just stood up from the floor, sat down on the bed next to Chara, and hugged them.

They gasped in surprise at first, but slowly, they returned the hug. Asriel was just overwhelmed with the feel of them, the _smell_ of them. They were… so thin. He could feel each and every rib through their sweater and his. They smelled overwhelmingly of pine and of that sweet metallic scent that he couldn’t quite place.

“How do I get home?” they murmured into his ear. Asriel froze.

“Chara…” he pulled away from them. There was this growing panic deep in his chest that he couldn’t control, and it was rising. They grabbed at his hands, and he couldn’t resist their powerful grasp. “I… I don’t really know how to say this…”

“There’s no way back, is there?” they said, looking directly into his eyes with those red ones of their own.

“W-well, it’s not quite as simple as that-“

“The same thing that’s keeping you down here is gonna keep me down here too, right?” Asriel swallowed, then, very slightly, nodded. Chara drew in a deep breath, then, after a long silence, spoke.

“Good.”

Asriel was taken aback. “Good?” he echoed, confused.

“If I can’t get back, then I’ll have to stay here with you, right?”

“W-well, yeah, I guess. B-but don’t you have anyone to get back to?”

“Asriel. In my entire life, nobody has been as nice to me as you have in the short couple of hours I’ve known you. I- I don’t want to go back, not when I can be with you.”

“Chara, be my sibling,” he blurted out suddenly. Silently, he cursed his stupidity, then his emotions when he felt tears welling up in his eyes.

“What?”

“You heard me. W-we can be siblings. M-Mom can take care of us and t-teach us, and Dad can- well, you have to know Dad to understand what he contributes. We can ad-adopt you, and we can be your family. We can be- we can be best friends forever.”

“But- you’ve only known me for a few hours! You can’t be serious!” Chara said incredulously. He could barely see the tears forming in their own eyes through his.

“M-monsters form close f-friendships quickly, for the most p-part. I think it has something t-to do with our SOULs b-being made of love. Not LOVE, but love.”

“A-are you sure? You wouldn’t get t-tired of me? Throw me away like t-trash?” Chara was full out crying at this point, and Asriel was sure he was too.

“I promise, Chara. I will never leave you, abandon you, fail you. Ever.” He hugged them again, and this time they didn’t even try to stop him.

They had been holding the hug for several minutes when he heard a large crash outside the room, and an unbelievably deep voice cursing in startlement. Asriel smiled and pulled out of the hug to put a finger to Chara’s lips, already open in exclamation. “I think it’s Dad. Stay here for a moment. I’m going to surprise them!” They nodded slowly in response, their face betraying a sudden terror. “I promise, I’m not going to leave you. I’ll be right outside the door. I’ll be right back.” He slipped off the bed and out the door quickly and (he hoped) gracefully.

“Asgore, what did I tell you about that lamp? Now we’re going to have to clean it up! It’s a hazard to have all this loose glass lying around!” His mother. Asriel looked around the corner of the hallway and the main room to behold his mother berating his father for having knocked over a large lap.

“Tori, we have more important things to worry about than safety hazards,” Dad growled at Mom. Asriel was taken aback by his father’s expression: he looked genuinely terrifying for the first time Asriel had seen him as such.

“But what if some poor moldsmol comes through and gets all the shards stuck in its slime? It’d be in pain, and wouldn’t even be able to realize it!”

“Not. The. Time,” Dad almost shouted. His words weren’t especially loud, but they were filled with authority. It was at times like this that Asriel realized why he had managed to hold onto his kingship since the Barrier was first created.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He burst out of hiding with a cry of, “Mom! Dad!” His parents turned and saw him, their expressions immediately becoming lighter and filled with emotion as he appeared. “Asriel!” Mom cried with joy, catching him up in her arms. Dad didn’t say a word: he just held on to Asriel tightly, like he was the only thing in the world to matter.

Then Mom’s expression turned angry as she set him down. “Where were you?!” she cried in rage at him. Asgore just didn’t let go of his child. “You’ve been missing for _hours_! We were worried sick about you! We thought- I thought- you could have been-” Mom dropped her facade of fury and dropped to her knees to hold Asriel again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said repeatedly, like a cadence to ward off evil. “I-I was curious about the Ruins. Mom wouldn’t let me come and explore, so- so I ran off to do it myself. And i-it was really boring until I met someone amazing. You’ve got to meet them!” He grabbed his mother by the hand and tried to run off to the room that he presumed must have been his. But Mom didn’t move. “Come on!” he said in exasperation. “I-I promised them I’d come right back. Th-they don’t like being left alone.”

“Asriel,” his mom said, voice still full of emotion. “We’re going back to New Home now. We just found you again. We’re not letting you run off again.”

“No!” he said, struggling to pull her behind him. “I-I promised!” Finally, he gave up. “Fine! I’l go get them! They’re right in the other room!” And with that, he freed his hand from Mom’s and ran off.

“Asriel, wait!” he heard her call out, but he was already running into the room where Chara was. They were lying on the bed, their face to the wall. “Chara! Chara! Wake up! It’s my parents! They’re here!” He shook them by the shoulders, still careful to be gentle. He wasn’t sure exactly just how much he had healed them of, so he was cautious to avoid harming them.

“Hmm? Your parents? Cool,” they said while rolling over, still half-asleep. He hadn’t realized how they had just gone right to bed the minute he left.

“No, you gotta listen! They’re coming in right now!” He gave them a harder shake, and they grudgingly sat up just as Mom and Dad entered the room.

“Asriel Dreemurr, when we get home, you’re gonna have a very serious talking to-” Mom was saying as she entered the room, but the moment she saw Chara, she froze. Dad also stopped in his tracks when he saw the half-awake child stretching in bed. Asriel didn’t recognize the looks on their faces, so he assumed that it must just be shock. At finding out he had a friend. Now that he thought about it, that was rather rude of them.

“Mom, Dad! I’d like you to meet my best friend, Chara!” he said eagerly, looking into his parent’s faces for a response. But neither of them moved or made a sound. It was almost scary how quiet they were. He tilted his head in confusion as Dad slowly backed behind Mom and Mom breathed very deliberately, both still staring at Chara. They were now returning his parents’ gaze, eyes full of fear and uncertainty.

Then slowly, ever so slowly, his mom said, steel in her voice, “Asriel. Get out of the room. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do I like writing Asriel so much? Right now, he's a sweet little kid, an idealist, someone who genuinely cares about other people. He might be a little socially awkward, but when he does make a friend, he sticks by them, no matter what. It's his ideals, his youthful naivety combined with a natural optimism, that make him so fun to write. And the tragedy that we all know is going to occur... well, that's just an added bonus.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I never really anticipated getting this far. I think it's you guys reading this that motivate me to keep going.
> 
> I've finally come to the decision to call this AU "Eternaltale". Tell me what you think of that name!
> 
> See you in the next one!


	12. Snowdin Town

You seem to be struggling, don’t you?

You have lost your balance on the ice pressure plate puzzle for the third time, once again falling down into the room where Papyrus has constructed two snow sculptures: one of himself, and one of Sans. Honestly, it’s an easy puzzle that we’ve done countless times before. I don’t quite understand why you’re having such a hard time doing it now. Well, we’re in no rush. We’ve got all the time in the world. Well, kinda. Not as much as we used to, but still.

It takes you two more tries to get the puzzle right Before you enter Greater Dog’s area. You check every snow poff meticulously, as you always do.

It’s a snow poff.

And this… is a snow poff.

This, however, is a snow poff.

Surprisingly, it’s a snow poff.

Snow poff…

Is it really a snow poff?

Behold! A snow poff.

Eh? There’s 30 G inside this… what is this?

JK, it’s still a snow poff. I don’t get why can never just skip to this one instead of checking each and every one. …Actually, I remember when we tried that. We didn’t find money until we checked each and every snow poff. Kinda makes no sense. But then again, neither does the Underground in general.

You investigate the final snow poff. As usual, it reveals itself to actually be a small dog… in massive battle armor, wielding a spear with a dog’s face on it. I don’t get what’s with dogs around here. There weren’t nearly so many when I first fell down here.

Oh, well. It’s the Greater Dog. As it rises from the snow, your SOUL is called out of your body. You call the Greater Dog. It bounds towards you, flecking slobber into your face. Then it hurls a sideways spear at you, flickering blue and white at intervals. You manage to avoid the spear by pausing when it passes though you as blue.

Now Greater Dog is seeking affection. It curls up in your lap as it is pet by you. It gets so comfortable it falls asleep… Zzzzz…

…

Then it wakes up! It’s so excited! It barks at you from on the ground, hurling its voice like magic bullets. You manage to avoid each bark attack without difficulty. Greater Dog is patting the ground with its front paws. You make a snowball and throw it for the dog to fetch. It splats on the ground. Greater Dog picks up all the snow in the area and brings it to you. Now dog is very tired… It rests its head on you… Another spear is thrown and dodged without difficulty.

Greater Dog wants some TLC. As you pet the dog, it sinks its entire weight into you… Your movements slow. But, you still haven’t pet enough…! Another easily avoided spear. Pet capacity is at 40-percent. You pet decisively. Pet capacity reaches 100-percent. The dog flops over with its legs hanging in the air. Another series of barks at you, but this time, you move too slow to avoid one. It hits your SOUL and sends spikes of pain throughout your body. You barely are able to contain yourself from screaming in agony as your HP is reduced down to 4. But Greater Dog is contented. You SPARE it without a second thought.

As your SOUL retreats to your body, the dog leaps out of its massive suit of armor and licks your face. Then, it leaps back into its suit of armor, but backwards, so that its tail end is left hanging in the air. Then, wagging into empty space, it turns and lumbers away. You stop to catch your breath for a moment before following, every step resulting in pain in your leg and your torso.

So, we’ve got no HP to spare, no food to bring it up, SAVEing doesn’t restore it… if we don’t heal up soon, we’re basically screwed. You find a bridge in the path and cross it without hesitation. Normally, this would be where the Gauntlet of Deadly Terror would be, but since Papyrus is occupied…

“HUMAN!” you hear from ahead of you. You look up, aching with every motion. Papyrus is there, fully bedecked in his armor, standing at the end of the bridge. When did he get back? It hurts to think. “I HAVE FINALY RETURNED FROM DEALING WITH UND- UH, BUSINESS! BUT! HOW DID YOU AVOID MY TRAP? AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY… IS THERE ANY LEFT FOR ME???”

Well, you’re not one to lie, are you? Especially when lying accomplishes the same result as telling the truth. You say you left it where you found it.

“REALLY!? WOWIE… YOU RESISTED THE FLAVOR OF MY HOMECOOKED PASTA… JUST SO YOU COULD SHARE IT WITH ME??? FRET NOT HUMAN! I, MASTER CHEF PAPYRUS… WILL MAKE YOU ALL THE PASTA YOU COULD EVER WANT! HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH NYEH!” He looks…. overjoyed, just like he always does when he finds out that you decided to not eat his food.

“WELL, UH… THIS BRIDGE IS A COMPONENT IN PERHAPS MY FINEST HUMAN-HUNTING TRAP! NOT THAT I’VE EVER HAD ANOTHER HUMAN CROSS IT BEFORE OR ANYTHING, SO YOU CAN BE THE FIRST TO TRY! I CALL IT THE GAUNTLET OF DEADLY TERROR!” …nothing happens. No ropes bearing spike balls or fire or annoying dogs appear magically on the sides of the bridge. Some part of your mind is wondering why nothing is happening, but the most of it is just dead with exhaustion and pain. “BUT! THIS CHALLENGE, IT SEEMS… MAYBE… TOO EASY TO DEFEAT YOU WITH. ESPECIALLY IN YOUR CURRENT CONDITION… MAYBE… YOU SHOULD GET SOME REST FIRST? THEN! THEN WE CAN TRY THIS TRAP IF YOU WANT TO!?” You nod, lightheadedly. It’s really hard to concentrate on anything he’s saying. Or on anything, really. “WELL, IN THAT CASE, LET’S GET BACK TO… HUMAN? ARE YOU FEELING ALRIGHT? YOU DON’T LOOK SO GOOD.” You try to say that you’re fine, but your tongue can’t properly form the words. You feel… dizzy. Before you know it, you are not on your feet anymore. You didn’t notice lying down. Maybe you just need to rest a little. Yeah, a short nap sounds amazing. “HUMAN!” Papyrus’ voice sounds closer than it was, but at the same time somehow impossibly distant. “BRIDGES MAKE FOR VERY UNCOMFORTABLE BEDS! HUMAN…? PLEASE DON’T FALL ASLEEP ON ME! PLEASE STAY AWAKE!”

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

_Chara, please… wake up!_

_You are the future of humans and monsters…_

…

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

After a long period of darkness, our eyes open, but everything around us is still blurry. You don’t know nearly how long you’ve been out, but it must have been a while, because your HP has grown to 14. Odd. Healing is working weirdly this time around. Normally, you’d be up to 30, at least, after a good night’s “sleep”, but it only looks like you’ve gotten back ten HP. We can worry about that later, don’t you think? For the meantime, we’ve got to figure out where we are.

You agree silently, and rub your eyes free of the sleep. Now that you’re fully adjusted to the strange light filling the room, you recognize that you are in Papyrus’ bedroom, lying on his surprisingly comfortable racecar bed. You are still fully dressed beneath the covers, bloodstained striped shirt and greasy jacket and all. There is an uncomfortable pain in your head, but you’re sure you just need some water and it’ll go away. For now, you just need to stand up.

It takes multiple attempts to seat yourself upright in Papyrus’ bed, pushing aside the covers that someone decided to kindly drape over your sleeping for, and several more tries past that to get to your feet. The entire time, your head is screaming in pain, and your mouth feels bone-dry. Leaning on the wall, you manage to make it to the door, which you have a little difficulty with as it opens inwards towards you. Finally, you hurl your hurting form out onto the balcony overlooking the rest of Papyrus’ house.

It looks the same as always, if even neater. The couch’s cushions are properly fluffed up, and the abandoned sock and pet rock are nowhere to be seen. The only thing keeping the image from being perfect is the lack of Papyrus. You can only assume he’s in the kitchen when the now-familiar sound of a stove exploding come from under your feet. You try to call out, but your voice isn’t working. So instead, you have to walk down the staircase, weak-legged as you are.

It goes about as well as you could have expected. You are only halfway down the steps when your legs give out, sending you tumbling to the bottom with a crash. You don’t lose any HP, but you don’t exactly feel unhurt. Maybe you should have rested for a little bit longer. You hear a commotion from the general direction of the kitchen, then an upside-down Papyrus appears above you.

“HUMAN! ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” he asks in his usual loud voice, concern evident in every word. “YOU STARTLED ME! I WAS JUST MAKING SOME BREAKFAST SPAGHETTI FOR YOU, BUT-” You cut him off with a quiet croak for water. “WATER? WHAT WOULD YOU WANT WATER FOR? YOU’RE NOT A FISH MONSTER OR ANYTHING. ARE YOU SECRETLY A FISH MONSTER?” He begins to ramble on about fish monsters, but the look of quiet desperation on your face makes him stop short and go to grab a glass from the kitchen. He returns with a glass full of the clear liquid and hands it to you, your weak arms shaking to hold anything even as light as a glass of water. You try to drink it, but in your prone position, more ends up on your face and your clothes than anywhere else. But what little does get in your mouth does a lot to wet your lips and relieve the intense dryness. You drain the entire glass, then drop it to the floor beside you. You thank Papyrus as best you are able. “OH, IT’S NO PROBLEM, HUMAN! HERE, LET’S GET YOU SOMEWHERE MORE COMFORTABLE.”

And then, he picks you up in his skeletal arms, lifting you like you weighed little more than a small kitten. Which you don’t: you fell into the Underground malnourished already, though you’re not sure why. It’s frankly remarkable you’ve managed to make your way through the whole Underground without stopping, though that can’t have been healthy for you. Luckily enough, most of the runs where you tried that were Neutral: it’s hard to go through a Pacifist run or a Genocide run without stopping to rest at least once.

Papyrus sets you down on the couch. It’s as old and raggedy as ever, but it looks like an effort has been put into keeping it in the best condition possible. As you settle on the cushion, you hear the familiar sound of loose change clanking together. Looks like not everything has changed, after all.

Not that too much has changed in Snowdin. You haven’t seen the town yourself yet, but judging by the unaltered state of the forest, you presume it’s not too terribly different from usual. The only real change you’ve seen was the different layout of Alphys’ devices: better hidden cameras and a lack of her puzzle. And you caught wind of Undyne’s name, which was… disturbing, considering the circumstances you last heard of her in. You shrug aside the thought for now, focussing on reality.

Papyrus has gone back to his attempt at cooking in the kitchen, and you hear a few more exclamations of surprise and explosions from that general area. Knowing how he usually is in the kitchen, this is a vast improvement. Maybe his so-called “breakfast spaghetti” – breakghetti? mornin’ghetti? - will be half-decent for once. Or even something resembling edible. You remember that one time we taught him how to cook well? He was pumping out lasagna and pizza like nobody’s business. Anything vaguely Italian, really, which is kinda weird, since Italy isn’t a place Underground. Though we had never managed to break his habits concerning spaghetti: Undyne had taught him too… well.

There you go again, thinking about Undyne. We can think about her later. Or… well, if you need to get it out of your system… You decide to wait for Papyrus to get done in the kitchen and instead watch some TV. You grab at the remote, lying on the floor in front of the couch, and turn on the television.

You are instantly annoyed by what’s on. Not even the usual Mettaton drivel is available to distract you, no matter how repetitive it is: instead, playing across the screen is an episode of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie. Not only any episode, but the fifteenth one, around the twelve minute mark, as the titular character cries into her best friend’s shoulder after being rejected by a total jerk at school. It is enough to make you cringe. When you had first agreed to Alphys’ offer of watching the anime together, you hadn’t truly understood what you were getting yourself into. Not only were you totally unaware as to what anime actually was, Mew Mew Kissy Cutie was an anime of a calibre resembling Papyrus’ special spaghetti. In multiple timelines, you had even reset entirely just to avoid watching it one more time. You actually had your first Genocide attempt after one such timeline. You couldn’t bring yourself to kill Toriel, though, so you had just reset again.

Man, resets can solve so many problems, don’t you think? But if this timeline is any indication, they can cause a whole lot, too.

Me, on the other hand… well, I like anime. When I had control of your SOUL, I had us watch the show multiple times. At first, it was just to get your goat, but the second time around, I was genuinely enjoying it. I’ve enjoyed anime far worse before, you know… back before… Anyway, Alphys and I could fangirl over it for hours, even managing to annoy Undyne, and you know how much Undyne likes anime.

Hey, do I like your friends more than you do?

You suffer in agony as I sing along to the theme song in your head before Papyrus finally comes out of the kitchen, bearing a plate of steaming spaghetti in one gauntleted hand. You realize that he is still wearing the dark armor of the guard, but his red cape adds an element of… color to his attire that makes the entire getup fit together.  “BREAKFAST SPAGHETTI, COMING RIGHT UP! WE, UH… I DON’T REALLY HAVE A TABLE TO EAT AT, SO THE COUCH WILL HAVE TO DO!” He sets the plate down in front of you on the couch. “HERE, EAT UP!” He waits eagerly for you to try it. You look down at the plate of spaghetti. It looks… as interesting as usual. And just as appetizing. But… something’s missing. “OH WAIT! I FORGOT THE SILVERWARE! I’LL BE RIGHT BACK!” He rushes off again before you can protest.

When he returns, presenting you a fork, you are in the midst of an intense staring match with the spaghetti. At least, there’s some part of you that is sure it’s staring back at you with hidden eyes, waiting for you to be the first to blink. That part MIGHT just be me, though. Honestly, this “meal” reminds me of one of those amalgamates down in the True Lab or something, anything other than the plate of spaghetti it is pretending to be.

“ALRIGHT, NOW YOU CAN TRY IT!” he says, grinning at you. You look up at him, then back at the… thing before you, then up at him again. Then you say you’re not really that hungry, which is technically true. You know monster food would actually be really good for you at the moment, but you’re not sure if it qualifies. You ask if you can go on a walk. “ARE YOU SURE? YOU SEEM TO HAVE AN UNFORTUNATE HABIT OF FALLING ASLEEP OUTDOORS.” You stress that you really just need to walk around a bit to regain your strength before you’ll be on your way. “WHAT? DO YOU PLAN ON LEAVING ALREADY, HUMAN!? BUT YOU JUST GOT HERE! PLUS, IT’S DANGEROUS OUT THERE! YOU COULD GET HURT!”

Oh my god. We’ve got a new Toriel on our hands.

Thinking quickly, you shrug as best you can while lying down. You say you can talk about it later, but for the meantime, you really just want to go on a walk. “ALRIGHT, HUMAN. BUT IF IT GETS TO BE TOO DIFFICULT FOR YOU, PLEASE, JUST TELL ME.” Such concern… when you look away from the self-centered, annoying, narcissistic side of the skeleton best known as the Great Papyrus, it’s really not that hard to tell that he’s a genuinely caring person. At the very least, it strikes me pretty hard. “ACTUALLY, COULD YOU STAND UP ON YOUR OWN? I’VE GOT TO PACKAGE THIS SPAGHETTI FOR LATER.”

You nod, and he grabs your untouched plate and rushes to the kitchen to add its contents to his food museum. As he’s away, you struggle to get to your feet, but you eventually succeed. You get a little dizzy, but you try to ignore it. The first thing you need to do is get some real food in you.

Papyrus returns from the kitchen, posing heroically. “OK, HUMAN! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, AM GOING TO WALK AROUND WITH YOU! WE CAN SEE SNOWDIN TOWN AND MEET THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE GUARD! THEY SURELY HAVE NEVER SEEN YOU BEFORE! OTHERWISE, THEY WOULD HAVE TOLD ME!” A pang of guilt stabs through you. I mean, you’re not feeling guilty or anything, but I’m trying to make you feel it. “THEY ALL HANG OUT IN GRILLBY’S FOR SOME REASON. THAT’S WHERE SANS USED TO HANG OUT, TOO, BEFORE HE MOVED OUT. I GUESS WE CAN GO THERE IF YOU REALLY WANT TO.”

Your interest has been piqued by that last sentence. You ask why Sans moved out. “HE… DIDN’T SAY.” Papyrus responds, scratching the back of his head in obvious discomfort. “HE JUST SAID HE HAD GOTTEN A NEW JOB THAT WOULD REQUIRE HIM TO MOVE AWAY, BUT THAT HE WOULD COME BACK AND VISIT ON THE WEEKENDS.” He is quiet for a moment, but then he reaches out to take your arm in his own. “WELL, COME ON! WE CAN’T JUST STAND AOUND HERE ALL DAY IF WE’RE GOING TO BE WALKING! THOSE ARE TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS!”

You slip your arm around his, a small smile on your face as you allow him to direct you out the door. Papyrus was inadvertently funny beneath his attempt at seriousness, unlike Sans, who hid his actual self behind a shield of humor and puns. They truly were opposites in every way. The only thing that seemed to keep them together was the fact that they were brothers. Otherwise, they might never have even gotten to know each other in the first place.

Your first impression of Snowdin Town is, as always, cold. But, then again, most of the Underground is unreasonably chilly all the time. That’s one thing we agree on, at the very least. I always had a sweater to wear whenever I wanted one, but you’ve been stuck with that terribly thin shirt through every reset. It’s frankly amazing you haven’t gotten frostbite in all of your many times down here. Though I guess it’s magic snow, so that makes a difference, right…? Oh well. You let yourself be led out fully into the middle of the path. The house looks just as it always does, except Sans’ regularly overflowing mailbox is gone.

“BUT BEFORE WE GET TO THE REST OF THE TOWN, I’VE GOT TO SHOW YOU THE WALL! IT’S REALLY QUITE AMAZING!” You begin to ask what wall he’s talking about, but then you look just beyond the shed. There, standing before you, is a wall.

The massive barricade is made of ice and packed snow, several feet thick and towering upwards towards the roof of the cavern. A small doorway, carved through the ice of the lower half, barely large enough to accommodate Papyrus if he ducks, allows access through the rampart. A ladder provides access to the top of the wall, where there seems to be enough room to walk along. The thing is entirely crude and obviously makeshift, but it stands strongly without a hint of weakness in the cold, magic light of Snowdin. Your jaw drops. You’ve never quite seen anything like it.

“IT IS QUITE SOMETHING, ISN’T IT?” Papyrus says in a voice filled with admiration. “SANS AND I PUT IT TOGETHER BEFORE HE HAD TO LEAVE! WELL, HE… CONTRIBUTED TO DESIGNING IT, AND I DID ALL THE ACTUAL WORK! HE KEPT ON SCRIBBLING ON THE BLUEPRINTS ALL THESE WEIRD MATH EQUATIONS AND GRUMBLING THAT IT WOULD ‘HAVE TO BE ENOUGH.’ I DON’T KNOW FOR WHAT, BUT IT SURE HAS BEEN HELPFUL.”

Helpful how, you ask as he begins leading you down the road into Snowdin proper. People are staring at you, but Papyrus does not seem to mind.

“UH… WELL, IT KEEPS THE BAD GUYS OUT. MOSTLY. AND IT LOOKS REALLY COOL AND SCARY FROM THE OUTSIDE. AND TEENAGERS ARE USUALLY TOO BUSY SPRAY PAINTING ON IT TO TORMENT GYFTROT, SO THAT’S ALSO A PLUS.”

Bad guys? I didn’t think there were bad guys in the Underground. You tell him as much. He looks sorry that he had said anything about it.

“UH… WELL, THERE ARE THE SPIDERS, BUT THEY NEVER LEAVE THE RUINS, SO WE DON’T HAVE A WALL THAT WAY. THEN THERE’S THE, UH… WELL, THERE’S THE TRASH KING.” The… Trash King? “YEAH! SOME GIANT INSANE MONSTER WHO LIVES IN THE DUMP IN WATERFALL. I HEARD HE LIKES TO EAT OTHER MONSTERS,” he confides in you, his face shifting to an expression of fear for a moment. “AND… WELL, WE FIGHT THE REVOLUTION IN WATERFALL TOO, BUT THEY’RE NOT REALLY BAD. THEY’RE MORE… MISUNDERSTOOD?”

The Revolution? What?

“WOW, HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK? N-NOT THAT THAT’S A BAD THING! I KNOW LOTS OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE UNDER ROCKS! BUT YEAH, ABOUT A DECADE AGO, SOME MONSTERS DECIDED THEY WERE FED UP WITH THE NEW KING AND… WELL, THEY SWORE TO FREE THE UNDERGROUND FROM THEIR REIGN OF TERROR. WE HAVEN’T GOTTEN A VISTOR FROM THE CAPITAL IN YEARS!”

In _years?!?_ You thought Papyrus was the captain of the royal guard! “NO, CAPTAIN OF THE _SNOWDIN_ GUARD! THERE’S NOT EVEN SUCH A THING AS THE ROYAL GUARD EXCEPT IN HISTORY BOOKS!”

Some of the pieces are beginning to fit together. You ask what happened to the old king.

“WHO? OH, I READ ABOUT HIM IN SCHOOL! HE AND HIS WIFE DISAPPEARED AFTER… HMM… WELL, AFTER SOMETHING HAPPENED. BUT DID YOU KNOW THAT THE OLD KING NAMED EVERYWHERE IN THE UNDERGROUND… EXCEPT FOR SNOWDIN!? THAT’S RIGHT! THE QUEEN NAMED THIS PLACE. SANS ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY FUNNY FOR SOME REASON, BUT I NEVER REALLY GOT THE JOKE.”

You ask him about the new king. “OH, THEM? I’VE NEVER SEEN THEM. I DON’T THINK ANYONE HAS IN A LONG TIME. THEY’RE KINDA AN ENIGMA. THAT’S WHAT SANS SAYS, AT LEAST!”

So… Mom and Da- Asgore and Toriel both disappeared? Probably after Asriel and I’s stupid suicide mission failed. And some other monster took their place… and the entire Underground is now split apart in civil war. Reminds me a little of the surface, don’t you think? Monarch dies or disappears, and their kingdom crumbles into chaos?

Oh, right. You never really paid any attention to history. Your loss, though. I always found the topic particularly enjoyable.

You are about to pass Grillby’s, but you throw your limited strength into pulling Papyrus there behind you. The bear next to the door looks at you funny, then murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like “politics”. “HERE? GRILLBY’S? IT’S DARK AND FULL OF GREASE. PURGATORY OF FRIES… HAMBURGER ABYSS… DO WE HAVE TO GO IN HERE?” he complains. You nod, a smile on your face. Sighing, he leads you in by the hand.

Grillby’s is small and always crowded, but the delicious aromas wafting on the air and the light and heat provided by the flaming bartender are always enough to lift your spirits. This room just reminds you of all your good memories with Sans, before your first Genocide run placed him firmly against you as your immortal adversary. Thinking back on it is… well, I’m kinda bummed out now. If only we hadn’t decided to murder the world, maybe we could have really been friends.

The entire roya- Snowdin guard, aside from Papyrus, is seated at the few tables usually reserved for the dogs. They all stare at you standing next to Papyrus in amazement, but when they notice his glare, they return to their game of poker. The other monsters in the bar just greet Papyrus with a few kind words or a raised drink and get back to their business. You sit down at the bar in front of the flaming bartender, who only peeks over at you for a moment before returning to continually wiping the same glass that is promptly covered with soot again because of his constant handling of it.

Papyrus takes a seat next to you at the bar, obviously uncomfortable. “WELL, I GUESS WE’RE HERE NOW… DO YOU WANT SOMETHING TO EAT?” You nod and ask for a burger. “BUT… DON’T YOU WANT ANY SPAGHETTI? UNLESS… YOU’RE SAVING IT TO EAT IT WITH ME LATER? OH, HUMAN, YOU ARE TOO KIND!” Sometimes, he sounds just like Mettaton, only actually sincere. It’s kinda creepy. “GRILLBY! MY HUMAN FRIEND HERE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A BURGER! WOULD YOU MAKE THEM ONE PLEASE?” Grillby promptly leaves the bar to go to the back room.

“SO… WHAT DO YOU THINK OF SNOWDIN? ISN’T IT MAGNIFICENT?” You suppose it is. “YES, IT’S VERY BEAUTIFUL. BUT… WELL, EVERYTHING JUST SEEMS MORE… TENSE. I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHY. IT’S BEEN LIKE THAT FOR A WHILE NOW.” Grillby comes back, bearing with him a plate with a burger on it. He places it before you, then goes back to wiping down that same cup. “THANK YOU, GRILLBY, FOR THIS WONDERFUL DELICACY! (TRY NOT TO CHOKE ON THE GREASE, WILL YOU?)” he whispers loud enough for the entire bar to hear, but no one seems to be paying any attention. They might be anyway. You know how much people like to gossip, even monster people.

“DO YOU WANT ANY KETCHUP? I DON’T LIKE IT MYSELF, BUT SANS SEEMS OBSESSED WITH IT.” Papyrus offers, holding out the bottle of the tomato paste towards you. You accept graciously, even though it seems too… light. You try to squeeze out a little ketchup onto the side of your plate, but nothing comes out. Frustrated, you hand the bottle back to Papyrus, who is obviously confused. He pops off the lid and takes a look inside. “CURSES! IT APPEARS THAT SOME HOOLIGAN HAS ALREADY USED ALL OF THIS RED CONDIMENT! I’M AFRAID THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO EAT YOUR BURGER AS-IS, HUMAN.”

You take a bite of the burger. It’s… delicious. You can barely keep yourself from a moan of pleasure as you take your second bite. It’s just that good. The magical meat with the smokey flavor, coupled with the homemade bun… it’s like biting into a piece of heaven. And you can feel your HP rising with each bite. Before you know it, the bar is all the way back at max, and you don’t feel weak anymore. Ah, the monster of magic food… wait. I messed that up. The magic of monster food… I’m sorry I’m a little overwhelmed right now.

“WELL, WHATEVER ELSE YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT SNOWDIN, IT’S REALLY A NICE PLACE TO LIVE. I MEAN, THE RUINS BELONG TO THE SPIDERS, WATERFALL’S STARVING, HOTLAND'S IN TOTAL ANARCHY, AND- WELL, SUFFICE TO SAY NEW HOME’S BASICALLY UNCLAIMED REAL ESTATE RIGHT NOW. COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE UNDERGROUND, WE’RE PRETTY WELL OFF. SO… HUMAN, I KNOW WE HAVEN’T KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR LONG, BUT… COULD YOU MAKE ME A PROMISE?”

You shrug and say probably. What does he want you to promise?

“WELL… COULD YOU PROMISE THAT… YOU WON’T LEAVE ME TOO?” You look away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I- I DON’T KNOW WHY I ASKED YOU THAT. J-JUST FORGET I SAID ANYTHING! I- I- I’VE GOT TO GO!” And with that, Papyrus leaps out of his chair and runs out of the bar, followed by a few tearful “NYEH”s. The entire bar watches him leave, then turns to you, eyes glaring. You wave nervously, then rush out of the bar following him.

What were you thinking? Better yet, what was HE thinking? Oh my god, this situation can't get any worse, can it? We have to find him, before anything bad happens for real. You quietly agree and begin rushing around the village in search of Papyrus. He’s not in his house or in his shed, nor is he at the store or the inn. The librarby is out of the question, and there’s no way he would have ran off to check his traps. Exhausted, you end up leaning against his shed, breathing heavily in the cold of Snowdin, your breath steaming up before you. Where could he possible have gone?

You turn to the wall.

This massive eyesore has loomed over Snowdin Town the whole time you’ve been there. It’s served as a reminder of how different everything has been this run, and of the Underground’s fractured state. It’s really a monument to our failure.

How… how does Sans remembering a single reset have anything to do with this messed up world?

You gather your Determination and walk through the narrow aperture in the wall.

Once you are all the way through the wall, you turn around to investigate it from the other side. It’s… an intimidating sight. The outer side of the wall is riddled with holes and scorch marks, despite being made of snow. You decide to blame it on magic.

You follow the path a ways as the mist gets thicker and thicker. You almost cannot see through it by the time you stop in your regular place. Something tells you that the person you were looking for is standing right before you.

“HUMAN. ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT SOME COMPLEX FEELINGS. FEELINGS LIKE… WATCHING EVERYONE YOU LOVE LEAVE YOU BEHIND. SEEING THE WORLD TEAR ITSELF APART FOR NO REASON. WANTING A COOL, SMART PERSON TO BE YOUR FRIEND. THESE FEELINGS…

“THEY MUST BE WHAT YOU ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW!!!

“AFTER ALL, I AM VERY GREAT. I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BEING ALONE EVER. I PITY YOU… LONELY HUMAN… WORRY NOT! YOU SHALL BE LONELY NO LONGER! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL BE YOUR FRIEND!”

Wow. He actually said it. He’s never gotten it out this early before. But, then again, these are unique circumstances.

“BUT… YOU WANT TO LEAVE. I… I CAN’T LET MY FRIEND GO AWAY AND… AND DIE. IT’S TOO DANGEROUS OUT THERE FOR YOU, FRAGILE HUMAN. HOWEVER DETERMINED YOU MAY BE, I CANNOT LET YOU KILL YOURSELF. WHY WOULD YOU EVER WANT TO LEAVE? WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE COULD EVER WANT HERE: GOOD FOOD, AMAZING PUZZLES, NICE FRIENDS…” That sounds awfully familiar doesn’t it? “WHO COULD ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE? BUT… IF YOU REALLY WANT TO LEAVE… I HAVE TO STOP YOU, DON’T I? FORGIVE ME, HUMAN. I CAN’T LET YOU GO LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!”

Your SOUL leaves your body, flickering in the dim Snowdin light as Papyrus gathers himself to stop you from leaving. It’s actually kinda depressing, isn’t it, how desperately he’s trying to stop you? You have to keep going, but Papyrus doesn’t want to hear your explanation. A forced smile makes its way across his face, but those are definitely tears in his eyes.

Papyrus blocks the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt it was necessary to do some exploration of this universe's Snowdin, just to show some of the differences and the similarities. Honestly, it hasn't changed all too much. Snowdin's one of those places that time does not touch. Papyrus also needed a bit more screen time (page time?) too, for almost the same reason. He's changed in some pretty substantial ways, but the core of who he is is the same.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! See you in the next one!


	13. Home

“Uh… why?” Asriel asked, confused. Why would they want him to leave? He didn’t move an inch. “Is something wrong?”

“Asriel, do as your mother says and leave. Please,” his father said, his eyes full of worry, practically begging him to leave. Chara was looking between the two of them, their terror written on their face.

“B-but why? I might have broken the rules, but you don’t have to take it out on Chara!” Asriel cried, moving so that his body was between his parents and Chara. “They didn’t do anything wrong!” His eyes were already streaming with tears, though he really had no reason to cry.

“This isn’t about you, Asriel,” Mom said coldly, not breaking her stare at the human. “It isn’t safe for you to be here for this. Get out of the way and let us do what we have to do.”

“Wh-what are they talking about?” Chara whispered in his ear, their voice quivering in fear. He couldn’t see them behind him, but he could feel that they had stood up and gotten really close to him. Cowering behind him.

“I don’t know, Chara, but we can figure it out!” he tried to tell them confidently, but his teary eyes and worried look probably ruined that impression. At least his voice wasn’t quivering. “Mom, Dad, I don’t know what y-you want to do to C-Chara, but I c-can’t let you,” he said, but his voice sounded weak even to his own ears. “If… if y-you wanna hurt my friend… you’re gonna have to get through me, first.”

Their gazes turned to Asriel, and to him, they looked stunned. Almost as if they couldn’t believe what he had said. “A-Asriel, you’ve got to listen to us!” Mom shouted, crying. “They’re human! They’re a threat to all monsters in the Underground!”

“Mom, Chara’s tired and hurt and scared! I had t-to heal them just to keep them from dying! Please, don’t do this!”

Dad looked as if his heart was breaking, but his tone was level and even as he rumbled, “With their SOUL… I-I can go through the Barrier… take six SOULs from the humans… and free everyone. We can be free of this prison.” He refused to look at Asriel, even out of the corner of his eye, instead, looking at the ground. Asriel could feel him start to gather his magic grudgingly, unwillingly, as if he didn’t really want to use it.

“Asriel… I’m scared…” Chara said quietly, burying their face in the back of Asriel’s sweater as they wrapped their arms around him. “Please… please don’t let them kill me…”

“You- you can’t touch them! You’re gonna have to turn my body to dust if you want to hurt Chara!” Asriel screamed, summoning his own magic in his hands. The small star burned in is hands, and unlike most other monster magic, it faintly rippled with the colors of the rainbow. “I… I won’t let you hurt them!”

“Asriel, honey, please listen to me!” Mom cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. Dad was still looking away in shame, but he had still summoned his trident to his hands. “We have to kill them! It’s the only way for everybody to be safe! It can- it can solve all of our problems! Please, just let us do what we have to! It’s for the sake of the Underground!” Asriel could feel Chara’s tears through his sweater, but he was determined to save them by any means necessary.

“Mom… Dad… I’m so alone. Chara’s my best friend. I would rather die than let you do anything to them.” He was still crying, but his voice was firm and he stood his ground, ready to attack his own parents if he needed to to save his friend. They could tell so, too.

“You… you really mean it, don’t you?” Dad said in that deep voice of his. Asriel nodded, the tears still streaming down his cheeks. Chara was shaking behind him, terrified out of their mind. “Very well then.” The trident in his hands disappeared. He looked at Chara, peeking out from above Asriel’s shoulder. They ducked their head in fear when his gaze touched them, but they kept looking. Dad took a few steps forward, which caused Asriel to recoil backwards a little, but Dad just knelt on the floor and extended his large, furred hand, a kind yet sad smile on his massive, bearded face. “Howdy! I’m Asgore. Asgore Dreemurr. What’s your name, little one?”

Chara looked at the hand in amazement, then back up at Dad’s face. Then, ever so slowly, from behind Asriel’s back they extended a hand and grabbed onto Asgore’s finger. They could only grab that much of Asgore’s massive hand with their own comparatively tiny one. “I’m C-Chara,” they said, their voice quiet and still quivering in terror. Asriel knew that there was a faint smile on his own face as he watched the scene unfold.

“Chara, is it? I promise you, Chara… for as long as you remain here… my wife and I will take care of you the best we can.” Mom made an alarmed noise at those words, but Dad ignored her and continued talking solemnly. “We can sit in the living room, telling stories… eating butterscotch pie… we could be like… like a family…”

Asriel could tell that his own smile was growing larger and larger, and he turned around and hugged Chara. They gasped in surprise at first, but then returned the hug. “You see, Chara? You’re going to be alright…. nothing bad will ever happen to you… you can be part of our family for real.”

“Asgore, you can’t be serious!” Mom cried, facing her husband with a look of pure fury on her face. Chara froze and began to tremble again at the sudden cry. “This… this _human_ is standing in the way of everyone’s hopes and dreams! They’re all that’s standing between us and freedom! You- You can’t just say that you’re going to protect them!”

“I’m not just saying it, Tori,” Dad said quietly, his voice low and deep. “I mean it. I made a promise to protect them, and I will. With my life.

“Besides, do you think that Asriel would ever forgive us for killing them?”

“YES!” Mom screamed, her emotions taking over for once. Whenever Mom let her emotions control her, Asriel knew that she was desperate. “He would understand once we explained it to him! They… they killed us, slaughtered us by the thousands, then locked us down here where we can’t even see the stars at night! And you want me to- to _let it go_!?”

“No, Tori. I expect you to abide by my decision. We are taking in this child, and that is final.” Dad had begun to look faintly terrifying again. His eyes were boring straight through Mom’s SOUL, and she shivered. There was just a hint of rage, but the aura of sheer power emanating from the king of all monsters was enough to overwhelm Asriel. But that didn’t stop him from coming to his senses quickly: it was still just his dad, after all. He would never do anything to hurt him. Chara was shaking in terror in his arms, though. He let go of them and turned to face his mom, ready to beg and plead for Chara’s life.

“P-please, Mom,” Asriel sniveled, his voice once again quivering as his eyes filled with tears again. “I-I care about them m-more than anything in the whole world.”

Mom was quiet for quite a while, lost in her own thoughts, no doubt. Then, ever so slowly, she spoke. “Alright, Asgore. I can care for the child. But if- if they turn out like every other human, let me assure you, I will hunt them down and take their SOUL myself. Then yours right afterwards, _dear_ husband.”

It was Asgore’s turn to shiver. “That sounds… fair, I suppose.” He turned back to Chara, his expression softening. “Chara, please, come home with us. We would love to have you over for dinner. Would you like to talk over a nice cup of tea?”

Chara looked unsure, but they eventually nodded. Asriel laughed and grabbed them by the hand, beginning to lead them out of the room. “Come on! There’s so much you gotta see!” He heard his mother murmur something about bad grammar, but he didn’t care much. “We’re gonna be traveling through Snowdin! It’s really awesome! There’s snow everywhere!”

“Snow? Underground?” Chara asked, finally gaining the courage to speak again. It was obvious they didn’t quite believe him about the snow. “How?”

“Magic, probably! Oh, and once we’re done there, we’re gonna take the ferry to Hotland! The ferry’s actually really cool, though the River Person is kinda weird. No matter how many people want to ride on it, there’s always enough room! But Hotland… Hotland _sucks!_ It’s like one million degrees there, and Mom refuses to knit me anything but sweaters! And once we’ve climbed those _stupid_ stairs all the way to the elevator, we…”

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

Asriel was happily scarfing down a piece of butterscotch-cinnamon pie, but his attention was focussed on Chara, who was sitting next to him. They were alone at the table, here were four chairs there most of the time: someone was always visiting Dad, whether it was Gerson or a monster that had come to complain around mealtime or someone else that he had invited to eat with them. Sometimes, he would complain about Mom having only made enough for three, but stopping suddenly as he realized that only the three Dreemurrs would be eating that night. He would then grumble under his breath about “that damn skeleton”, though Asriel didn’t know who he was talking about. He had no clue what skeleton Dad was talking about, since he had never seen a skeleton monster himself.

Asriel shook the thought of the mysterious skeleton from his mind. Instead, having finished his meal and dessert already, he watched Chara eat. Or rather, he watched Chara play with their spaghetti, moving it around with their fork without actually taking a bite. He didn’t know why not: it had been delicious. Spaghetti had always been one of Dad’s favorites, and he would always cook it himself. Actually, Dad did most of the actual cooking in the household: Mom was hopeless except when it came to baking, which she excelled at. Her Underground-famous butterscotch-cinnamon pie was evidence to that. But the one time Asriel had seen her try to actual cook… suffice to say, the food had more closely resembled ashes than eggs. Which was actually an impressive feat, considering the fact that she had been making them hard-boiled.

“How are you enjoying your dinner, Chara?” he asked, looking hungrily over at their plate. “Is it tasty?”

“It is… it’s actually delicious, but I’m not really that hungry,” they said, head hung low in shame. Asriel extended his hand over to them, and they flinched. But Asriel just grabbed their plate and pulled it over to himself, picking his fork back up.

“Oh, well. More for me, I guess,” he said, wrapping noodles around the prongs of his fork and lifting it to his mouth. “Though if you don’t eat, I don’t think Mom will let you have any dessert.”

“You mean that pie?” Chara asked, grinning slightly. “That’s made with snails. Not my cup of tea, thank you very much.” To punctuate their point, they lifted their tea cup to their mouth and took a long sip. Asriel groaned when he realized the joke they were making, lowering the fork from his mouth, spaghetti still quite uneaten.

“Nah, that’s more of a main course type of thing. This is- well, it was- butterscotch-cinnamon pie. Best pie in the entire world, I bet.” Chara’s expression changed when he said it wasn’t snail pie. As he lifted the fork to his mouth one last time, ready to finally have more of the delicious spaghetti, they slapped it out of his hand. It fell back onto the plate with a clatter, and they snatched back their plate as Asriel sputtered in irritation. “Wha- What was that!?”

“Well, if I have to eat the spaghetti to get butterscotch pie, I’m sure as hell gonna eat my spaghetti!” they cackled, shoveling noodles and sauce into their mouth as fast as they could. Their appetite apparently restored, Chara began to look more and more refreshed and energized, causing Asriel to smile. He had known monster food would help them considerably.

Before Asriel had even realized it, they were out of their seat and rushing for the pie in the kitchen. He turned around in his chair, amused, to watch them struggle to cut out a piece of the pie with the spatula provided. By the time they returned, an oversized piece of pie on their plate, their face was suddenly grim. “Where are the knives?” they asked, their tone dark as they slid back into their chair.

“Uh… we don’t have any knives. It’s easier to just use magic or a spatula or something. Some of the other monsters probably have some though. Why? Did you want one?”

“When I fell down, I had a knife,” Chara said simply. “Did you see it anywhere? Did you pick it up?”

“No… I mean, I was a little focussed on not letting you die. Why? Would you like to go back and get it? We can go in the morning.”

“YES,” they said, their eyes widening horrifically and going totally dark. Asriel recoiled in horror, but before he could do anything, Chara had closed their eyes and pulled themselves into a ball in their chain, grabbing their knees and rocking themselves and mumbling to themselves, “OhmygodI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry-”

“Sorry for what?” Asriel asked slowly, forcing himself to stop shivering. That face… it was terrifying. What… What had happened? “There’s nothing to be sorry for. You just startled me, that’s all.”

“B-but… I… I did the creepy face. O-or at least, I started to.” They kept rocking themselves back and forth as Asriel looked at them in concern. “Please… please don’t hurt me.”

“Why would I hurt you, Chara? You’re my best friend. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to hurt you.”

“B-but wh-when I m-made the c-creepy face, he would… he would…” They sobbed, tears flowing out of their eyes. Asriel stood and put his arms around them to comfort them, but he didn’t think it did any good.

“Chara, nobody’s going to hurt you down here. Whatever he did, he can’t do it to you any longer,” Asriel cooed, trying to comfort them, and when their tears stopped flowing for an instant, he thought he had succeeded.

“Y-yeah, he w-won’t touch m-me ever again. I  M A D E  S U R E  O F  T H A T.” Their eyes went wide again and something… _dark_ started leaking from their mouth and from their eye sockets, and a terrible laughter filled the air around them. Asriel felt his insides crawling at the sight, but instead of recoiling, he pulled them closer to himself, burying their face in his sweater. Their laughter turned to sobbing, and Asriel only held them tighter as they sobbed against his chest. “I… I… Why… why are you being… so nice to me? I… I don’t understand.”

“It’s because I care about you, Chara. I care about you more than anyone else,” Asriel said soothingly, stroking their hair with one hand. “Because you’re special, Chara.”

“You-you’re such a crybaby, Asriel,” they sobbed hypocritically into his sweater. Asriel realized he was crying, though not nearly as much as Chara was.

It was at that moment that Mom and Dad entered the room after their long, _long_ discussion about the human child. Asriel knew that Mom was staunchly against Chara living with them, much less their very existence, but when Dad made a promise, he stuck to it, no matter what. And Dad had promised to protect Chara. So the inevitable argument had really been purposeless and only served to enrage Mom even further. Mom and Dad rarely truly fought: most of it was poking fun at each other. Or rather, Mom poking fun at Dad while he stoically accepted it. But when they fought for real, it made Asriel feel sorrowful. Especially when there was nothing he could do about it.

So after a long argument had left both sides exhausted and furious at each other, Mom and Dad walked into the room to see Asriel holding Chara to his chest as they cried into his stained and dirty green-and-yellow striped sweater, and neither could remain angry for long when confronted with such a pitiful sight. They immediately rushed in to comfort Asriel and Chara, Mom at first distant but gradually warming up to the human child, while Dad seized both in his arms and tried to make a bad joke to lighten the mood. It was as if they were a real family.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

The next day.

The next day.

Asriel had lead Chara through the entire Underground by their hand, showing them all the wonderful things that he had discovered. The puzzles in Hotlands which involved shooting a target by moving the boxes. The hidden room behind the waterfall. The gems in the ceiling that served as stars for monsters to wish upon. The bar in Snowdin run by a fiery bartender and his young son, who was unusually quiet for a young monster. They laughed at a budding comedian’s good ice puns and stopped in at a snail farm run by a fatherly ghost and his sister. He had introduced them to many of the Underground’s monsters, like the Woshuas and the Icecaps. He led them all the way back to the Ruins, back to the very spot they had fallen down to in the first place. It was the greatest adventure Asriel had ever been on, even if it was through a place he could navigate blindfolded. Well, not blindfolded: he didn’t trust the stairs in Hotland enough to walk down them without sight. But it was very familiar territory for him, nonetheless.

But they eventually ended up at the spot where it had first began. One of the few spots in the Underground where the sun shone through the Barrier into the Underground. It would be beautiful, if there were anything there but hard stone and dirt.

And a knife, abandoned in the dirt. They had been looking for it for three minutes when Asriel finally pulled it out from where it was hidden, buried in the ground. But when he found it, he didn’t call out to Chara that he had found it, because he was so enraptured with it. It was rusty, slightly dull but still sharp enough to cut. But what most caught him up in the knife was the dried red crust it was covered in. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He peeled a little bit off and put it on his tongue, but made a face almost immediately. It tasted disgusting, and it had this weird quality to it that reminded him of what little human food he had managed to scavenge from the dump. He resolved to not try any more of the weird red substance.

“Hey, you find it yet?” Chara called from the other side of the room. Asriel was shaken from his stupor by their words. For some reason, a part of him wanted to tell them he hadn’t found it, but he disregarded himself and stood up.

“Uh… actually, yeah, I just found it! It was here, under the dirt. I guess your fall really threw up a lot of dirt.” He started to walk over to where they were waiting expectantly and handed it over, handle first. Gerson had taught him how to handle a knife, which he appreciated, but he didn’t think knives were nearly as cool as _swords._ I mean, you could call a knife a dagger, but a sword? A blade, a saber, a scimitar, so many cool other words you could call it by.

“Aw, man, don’t tell me it got _dirty_ ,” they said sarcastically, then started to giggle when they saw Asriel frown.

“That one wasn’t even a real joke!” Asriel pouted as their chuckle turned into a full-on laugh. “There were so many other jokes you could have made!”

“Such as?” Chara asked, crossing their arms and grinning. Asriel raised a finger and opened his mouth, but nothing came to mind. “I’m open to suggestions.”

He thought for what seemed like an eternity, when a seemingly brilliant pun popped into his head. “Well, it was buried in all this dirt, but we couldn’t let it _rust in peace_.” As soon as the words had left his mouth, he realized just how stupid he sounded. He pulled his long, floppy ears over his face in embarrassment, his cheeks red even under his fur.

Chara just looked at him funny for a minute, then broke down laughing. Asriel peeked at them from behind his ears, even more embarrassed. “Oh, man, _knife_ one, Az,” they said, breathless, and then they laughed some more.

Asriel groaned again at the awful pun, the sound almost indecipherable behind his friend’s laughter. But then something caught his attention. “Wait- what did you just call me?”

“Uh… ‘Az’? It’s just a nickname I came up with for you,” Chara said dismissively, but then their eyes were on Asriel’s, filled with worry. “What, do you not like it or something? I-I’m sorry. I was only t-trying to be clever. I-I can c-call you something else if y-you like. P-please don’t be m-mad with m-me!” they were practically begging by the end, falling to their knees and tugging at Asriel’s sweater. Were they- crying? And they had called _him_ a crybaby! …they weren’t wrong, but still.

“No, no, I’m not mad or anything! It’s just- I’ve never had a nickname before. E-everyone just calls me ‘Asriel’ or ‘your highness’ or something like that. I- I like it,” he said, shocked. How could they think so little of themselves? They hadn’t done anything wrong, so why would he be mad? Was this just what humans were like? He had heard that they were strong, courageous, confident: Chara had turned out to be anything but. Not that there was anything wrong with that, it just wasn’t very human-like from what he had read.

“You- you’re really okay with it?” Chara said, sniffing. It was almost pitiful, seeing them like this. “You’re the best, Asriel!” They shot up and hugged him tightly around the chest, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He could feel the hilt of the knife digging into his back. He was just happy that it wasn’t the other end, but if Chara had no real intent to hurt him, it wouldn’t affect him all that terribly.

“I-I am? That’s awful high praise, coming from you,” he managed to force out. Somehow, the lack of air had made it easier for him to think of clever things to say. He didn’t really understand it himself.

They finally release him from their hug and he breathed in deeply. But they didn’t seem keen on letting him have much time to breathe, as they immediately followed up with: “What do you mean, people call you ‘your highness’? Are you-” they gasped, holding their hands up to cover their mouth, with their knife still in hand, “are you royalty?”

Asriel scratched the back of his head and smiled nervously. “Weeeeeeellllllllllll… I guess I kinda _am_ … but it doesn’t really matter right now… I’m too young to have any real responsibilities…”

“Oh my god! I’m… I’m… you’re fucking royalty! I’m best friends with a fucking _prince_!” Chara looked astonished. Asriel inwardly cringed at the language

“Watch it with the cursing, please!” Asriel rebuked them, but was quick to smile when their expression dropped. “Don’t worry about it too much, though! You know… since we’ve kinda adopted you, that would make _you_ royalty!”

Chara looked into his eyes, utterly dumbfounded. “Wha- so I’m…”

“You-“ Asriel said, staring into their beautiful crimson eyes “-are the only human resident of the Underground _and_ already almost the adopted child of the king and queen. You’re practically a prince. Princess? I’m sorry, I don’t quite have the proper term for you.”

“It doesn’t matter that much to me. Just… if anyone ever needs to refer to me, they could just call me ‘the human’. People will know who you’re talking about. There’s only one of me down here, after all.”

Asriel laughed a little, but then a thought popped into his head. “Chara, when I found you, you were covered in red stains. And then, when I found the knife, there was this red stuff on it. What is that? Is it something from the surface I haven’t heard about?”

Chara was quiet for a long, long time. Had he said something wrong? He couldn’t tell. Humans might be very touchy about the strangest thing. Or maybe it was just Chara. He was about to apologize for his words, before they finally said, “That’s… it’s called _blood_ , Asriel.”

“Blood? What’s that?”

“You- you don’t know what _blood_ is?” Asriel shook his head. “H-how?”

“I don’t know. It’s not a thing monsters have, I guess.”

“It’s… well, it’s kinda this red stuff that flows through your body and is pumped by your heart and keeps you alive somehow.”

“Your heart? Like, your SOUL?”

“No, your literal heart. And- and if you’re hurt… or die… it comes out.”

“That’s… weird.”

“What, are you telling me monsters don’t bleed?”

“No, we just sort of… turn to dust when we die, and when we’re hurt, it doesn’t really show up unless it’s fatal. I’ve never heard of blood before.”

Chara frowned, lost in thought. “I… I think that’d be nice. To have never heard of blood.”

Silence overtook the room. They just stood there among the rocks and the dirt, completely quiet. Then, finally, Asriel mustered up the courage to speak once more. “Chara?”

“Hmm?” they replied, obviously somewhere far away in their thoughts.

“Why… why did you come down here? What made you fall down a hole in the mountain?”

Chara turned away, their expression darkening. “I… I’d rather not talk about it.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Chara was once again quiet, but after a long pause they eventually said, “Humans… they aren’t nice like monsters are. They’re always fighting and screaming and dying and fucking each other when they think nobody’s looking. They’re awful. Every single last one of them.”

“Chara, that can’t be true! You’re human, and you’re a good person! So they can’t all be that bad!”

“I stand by what I said. Every. Single. Last. One. Of. Them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After this chapter (and the one after it) we finally return to "Sans in the past"! But... the next few "Sans in the past"s I did were very hard to write due to the content, so please bear with me on those.
> 
> I'm running out of time to write, unfortunately. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop updating this fic, but after I've gone through my preprepared content, updates will become more... sporadic. I'll let you know when that happens, but I just wanted to give you a heads up.
> 
> Asriel and Chara interactions are officially my favorite things to write for this fic. I would love to do more of them, but... well, we know how their story ends. Which is part of the tragedy, of course.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! See you next time!


	14. Bonetrousled

Papyrus blocks the way!

You check his stats, knowing you have nothing to fear until you definitively attack him or don’t. Just as you suspected, he likes to say: “Nyeh heh heh!”

“NYEH HEH HEH!” he chuckles as if he had heard me. I know he can’t actually hear me, but every time he does that, it makes feel a little… off. Like… Napstablook can hear me, and some of the other ghosts, too, but when someone else acts like they have, it gives me the chills.

He hurls lines of bones beneath your SOUL, none of them high enough to ever have a chance at hurting you. It’s a little pathetic, until you remember that he usually traps you with gravity magic. Why couldn’t he just hurl bones at you like a regular monster? Even Sans attacked you while your SOUL was red, but then again, you couldn’t really call his encounter “fair.”

You really want to put off this battle for as long as you can, so you make a point to insult him. It’s something that you’ve heard Sans say to him in other timelines, when the shorter skeleton was particularly annoyed with his brother’s antics. You don’t really know how bad an insult it is, but you hope it is enough to elicit some reaction.

Papyrus’ smile only grows wider, tugging at the corners of his mouth, even as tears begin leaving wet streaks down his cheekbones. “Y-YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY THAT…” he says sadly, his eyes falling. “Y-YOU’RE MY F-FRIEND. I-I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE UP ON YOU!” He suddenly looks even more determined to succeed in stopping you from leaving. You can’t help but wonder if you’ve made a mistake, but there’s no going back now. Another line of bones passes uselessly beneath your SOUL.

A devilish thought pops into your head. Maybe if everything is different in this timeline, something else might change too…? So you gather your determination and flirt with Papyrus. Mostly by telling him how much you like his armor, but you think you’d like it better on your bedroom floor. That’s… certainly one way to flirt, all right. I mean… you don’t really like Papyrus, you’re just doing this to see if you can get a different reaction out of him. A-and for those of us who have to _endure_ such antics, knowing full well neither of you mean anything by it…

H-hey! No, I’m not embarrassed! You’re just weird!

Papyrus’ cheekbones light up bright red, but he shakes his head, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes. “FL-FLIRTING!? THIS ISN’T REALLY THE TIME TO REVEAL YOUR _ULTIMATE FEELINGS_! P-PLUS! I’M A SKELETON WITH VERY HIGH STANDARDS!!!”

Completely deadpan, you tell him that you have zero redeeming qualities.

“OH NO!!! THAT HUMILITY… IT REMINDS ME OF… MYSELF!!! YOU’RE MEETING ALL MY STANDARDS!!!” You almost laugh out loud when you hear him say that humility reminds him of himself. It’s… almost too much to handle, even after all these timelines. “I GUESS THIS MEANS I HAVE TO GO ON A DATE WITH YOU…? LET’S DATE L-LATER!! AFTER WE’VE SORTED THIS OUT!” His smile now looks to be genuine. You’ve really brightened his mood. But he’s sure to remember the dire circumstances you find yourselves in any moment now.

Well, there’s not much you can do to delay the battle any further, aside from useless flirting, so you instead stand staunchly before the skeleton and tell him you won’t fight him. He looks at you, stunned. 

“SO YOU WON’T FIGHT BACK… I SUPPOSE THAT THIS MIGHT MAKE IT EASIER. MAYBE… WE CAN JUST GO HOME AND NOT HAVE TO FIGHT AT ALL?” He asks, hope in his eyes, but you dash his dreams on the ground with a stubborn shake of your head. He sighs. “VERY WELL THEN… LET’S SEE IF YOU CAN HANDLE MY FABLED ‘BLUE ATTACK’.” Then he hurls a bunch of blue bones at your SOUL, all of which pass through it harmlessly. But… something’s wrong with this picture… is there something different about the ground… look out! As your SOUL turns blue with a sudden flicker, you force it to leap up, barely avoiding a whole massive line of bones suddenly protruding from the ground. Then you see the tunnel of bones hurtling right for your now-red SOUL from Papyrus’ outstretched hand. You manage to navigate it effortlessly, having encountered the pattern many times before, but you are in too much of a panic to think of where. Where the hell did Papyrus learn these techniques? Before you know it, your SOUL is blue again, lying in the snow unharmed. You feel like cursing at Papyrus, but it wouldn’t be any help. Instead, you fix him with a glare as you lie breathless in the snow. He shifts uncomfortably and looks away.

“*cough* I-I’M SORRY FOR THAT. SANS TAUGHT ME TO ALWAYS LEAD OFF WITH MY HARDEST ATTACK FIRST. HE ALWAYS DID THIS BIT AT THE END WITH L-LASERS, BUT I PREFER REGULAR OLD BONES. B-BUT DON’T WORRY!” he cries, seeing the disconcerted look on your face. “I-I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO BE SAVING MY _SPECIAL ATTACK_ FOR LATER! SO… WELL… IF YOU REALLY WANT TO… TO FIGHT, YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO!

“A-ANYWAY, YOU’RE BLUE NOW. THAT’S MY ATTACK.” Well, he’s not wrong. You _are_ blue now.

Don’t think at me like that! I warned you that that was coming! If anything, you should be _thanking_ me!

…what do you mean, I never thanked you? I did back during that first Genocide route, when I first formally informed you of my presence. You _did_ bring me back from the dead then grant me the oblivion I crave, after all. Well, until you didn’t.

“HMMM… I WONDER WHAT I SHOULD WEAR…” he says, seemingly forgetting your presence. Then, with a comedically shocked expression on his face, his gaze whips back to you. “WHAT!? I’M NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT DATE THING!” He says as he nonchalantly dabs some bone cologne behind his ear. He hurls a wave of bones at you to make up for it, but you jump them without difficulty. He’s really got to step up his game.

“YEAH! DON’T MAKE ME USE MY _SPECIAL ATTACK_!” He cries, hurling another wave of bones at you. You manage to avoid them all, but you almost slip up on the last one, which comes back to catch you from the back. He really has learned some from Sans, hasn’t he?

“I-I CAN’T LET YOU LEAVE! YOU JUST GOT HERE!” A pattern of bones impedes your movement, but you manage to dodge the attack anyway.

“THE REST OF THE UNDERGROUND IS NOWHERE AS NICE AS SNOWDIN!” More bones are hurled at you as he talks.

“AND- AND UNDYNE… WELL, SHE’D TEAR YOU TO SHREDS!” More bones, but you slip up upon hearing Undyne’s name. If Papyrus is this scared of Undyne now… this could have implications beyond what you could have thought. Maybe she has something to do with the Revolution in Waterfall…? It wouldn’t surprise you if she were behind the whole thing herself. Anyway, your SOUL is bludgeoned by a particularly tricky bone pattern, and you lose 4 HP. Papyrus seems to regret hitting you when you cry out a little when a sympathetic wound appears on your arm. It looks like a bruise, but it hurts a lot more. Probably because magic.

“BUT IF YOU STAY HERE… YOU COULD BE HAPPY!” he says in his usually loud voice, his tone becoming more jovial. You manage to dodge the line of bones he threw despite his sudden change in attitude.

“WE COULD BUILD SNOW-SCULPTURES IN THE FOREST!” Papyrus prepares a non-bone attack and is about to fix his mistake, but inwardly says “screw it” and attacks anyways.

“WE COULD EAT SPAGHETTI UNTIL WE’RE FILLED TO BURSTING!” You shiver at the thought, still leaping over the line of bones hurled at you. This time, you’re expecting the boomerang bones and manage to dodge to the side just in time.

“WE COULD… TALK TO SANS WHENEVER HE COMES TO VISIT!” More bones which you dodge. That’s another thing… Papyrus seemed to imply that Sans isn’t always made of snow (or dust), but is instead bones sometimes. You wondered what his job was. Maybe it was just another excuse to slack off…?

“WE COULD… WE COULD…” Papyrus seems to be running out of things to do in his head, even though you can think of several right off the top of your head. You’ve lived the domestic life with the skeletons before, and it was pretty fun. For me, at least. It was hilarious to watch Sans barely contain his dirty jokes when you set him up just perfectly. You were supposed to be a kid, after all. What could you know?

Though he also knew you were the kid that could reset time. You wondered if he cared as much back then, or only got to be more involved once you started doing Genocide runs. Probably the latter. He had said that he “couldn’t afford not to care anymore.”

“I-I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT ELSE WE COULD DO, BUT PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO STAY!” Papyrus was actually crying at this point, falling to the ground and sobbing into his bony hands. But the battle isn’t over yet, as your blue SOUL indicates. You start to go to comfort him, but he stands before you can, tears still leaking from his eye sockets. “B-BUT IF I MAKE YOU STAY… WOULD YOU REALLY LIKE ME? OR WOULD YOU JUST PRETEND TO BECAUSE I HURT YOU?” You can’t answer: I personally don’t think I could ever truly hate Papyrus, but he is trying to force you to stay with him instead of moving on like you have to. You don’t even know why you have to, all you know is you must.

“W-WELL, YOU _DID_ FLIRT WITH ME, SO YOU OBVIOUSLY LIKE ME! BUT… IT’D BE A LITTLE AWKWARD TO DATE IF I HURT YOU.” I laugh a little at that. I knew some really messed-up people with messed-up relationships on the surface before I came down here. Plus… it honestly doesn’t sound _too_ bad…

So I’m a bit of a masochist. I’m the demon-ghost-child who killed themselves and their brother for what added up to be practically nothing, and I’m a little turned on by pain. So what? Sue me.

“URGH! IT DOESN’T MATTER! JUST! GIVE! UP!” he howls, hurling attack after bone attack at you. Some are blue, some are not, and the pattern is eerily similar to one of Sans’ that always tripped you up a little.

“GIVE UP OR FACE MY… _SPECIAL ATTACK_!” He’s panting with the effort of throwing bones at you, but the attacks don’t slow. If anything, they become faster, harder to avoid, and tighter together. All of a sudden, you find yourself maneuvering your gravity-affected SOUL through a platforming segment that you figure is ripped directly from Sans’ book.

“YEAH! VERY SOON I WILL USE MY _SPECIAL ATTA_ \- YOU KNOW WHAT? IT’S NOT WORTH THE EFFORT TO BUILD IT UP LIKE THIS. JUST- HERE’S MY SPECIAL ATTACK.” And he looks to the side to summon his special attack, but he finds it in the worst possible place: the jaws of a small, white, fluffy dog, chewing happily away at his magic attack. He doesn’t even speak, instead just glaring murderously at the dog. You and the dog both shiver: you’ve never seen that expression on his face before. The dog just sort of looks up at him with eyes wide, then slowly and ever so surely, it backs out of the battle, eyes not leaving Papyrus’ face. Papyrus just watches it go, fury plain on his face, but it turns quickly into sorrow as soon as the dog is gone. He once again falls to his knees, tears streaming down his skull. “WHAT’S THE USE? MAYBE… MAYBE I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP… YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, AND THEN… AND THEN…”

You step forward and embrace Papyrus as best you can in a hug. It’s hard, because you’re at an awkward angle and his armor is kinda spiky, but you manage it. He gasps as you embrace him, then turns to look at you. You finally feel your SOUL retreat from the open air to your body.

“NYEH HEH HEH…” he chuckles sadly. You look at him curiously. “IT’S PATHETIC, ISN’T IT? I CAN’T EVEN SAVE YOUR LIFE, AND YOU’RE JUST A SMALL HUMAN. AND… AND YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE ME TOO. PLEASE… PLEASE DON’T GO… I DON’T WANT TO LOSE ANOTHER FRIEND.”

You promise you won’t leave him, that you’ll only ever be a phone call away. And besides… you did promise him a date. Well, sort of. Mostly you just flirted badly and he thought he had too now. And you couldn’t do that if you were dead, couldn’t you?

You promise him you won’t die.

“TH-THEN *sniff* WHY D-DO YOU HAVE TO LEAVE?”

You explain that it’s because of his brother. You… have an appointment with him later, and you had to meet him there. Talking about it like this brings you back to all those times in the Last Corridor, him judging you for your sins. It was… kinda a standing appointment, you guess.

“W-WELL, IF IT’S JUST MY BROTHER, W-WE CAN WAIT! I-I’M SURE HE WOULDN’T MIND IF Y-YOU STAYED WITH ME FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS.”

Yes, but that would be rude to him, to not show up to the thing you scheduled yourself. You didn’t know how long Sans stood in that Judgement Hall, just waiting for you to arrive. It was probably somewhat maddening, since he knew that his judgement wouldn’t change a thing in the end. Maybe it should have. Maybe the whole problem is that we didn’t listen to Sans.

Maybe we really wouldn’t be in this mess if we didn’t come back, like he told us to.

“R-REALLY?” Papyrus’ voice shocks us back to reality. “W-WELL, IF YOU PROMISE TO BE SAFE…”

You promise.

“…THEN OKAY! JUST… COME BY MY HOUSE FOR THAT DATE LATER, ALRIGHT?” Then he stands up and lumbers off back to Snowdin, his every footfall easily audible even in the snow. Normally, at this point, he would almost float down the path back to his house, but he seems… more grounded. Heh.

You know, isn’t this all kinda depressing? I mean, we’ve got an empty Ruins and a besieged Snowdin. A starving and half-insane Muffet with crushed dreams and a tired and lonely Papyrus. Well, Papyrus has always been lonely, but now he doesn’t even have his brother or Undyne to keep him company. But everyone we know has had their hopes and dreams crushed by circumstance, and why? Because one hanger-on from a previous timeline tried to make things better?

It’s not fair when doing the right thing just makes things even worse.

Like… trying to free everyone from the Underground… giving Asriel a taste of mortality and life again, just to strip it away…

I don’t care that we got the happy ending all those times. Fate’s cruel enough to deny one to the one person who deserves it.

…let’s just get back to Snowdin to date Papyrus.

 

***      *      *      *      ***

 

You walk up to Papyrus, who is standing in front of his house dejectedly, his smiling face somehow contorted into a frown. But his expression immediately brightens when he sees you standing in front of him, a patient smile on your face. “S-SO YOU CAME BACK! TO HAVE A DATE WITH ME!” he quickly amends, sweat somehow beading at the top of his skull. “YOU MUST BE REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT THIS… I’LL HAVE TO TAKE YOU SOMEPLACE REALLY SPECIAL… A PLACE I LIKE TO SPEND A LOT OF MY TIME.” He begins to lead you down the road into the center of Snowdin Town. You follow, smirking to yourself. He always leads you right back to where you started: his house. The same thing happens this time, as he pipes up after turning around, “MY HOUSE!!!” He disappears inside. You follow.

It looks exactly the same as it did the same time you were here, but then you were too weak to really pay attention. The TV is still on, and still playing that anime that you hate so much. You feel slightly guilty about having left that on. Who knows how the power situation is down here this time around?

“WELCOME TO SCENIC MY HOUSE!” Papyrus shouts enthusiastically, waving at the interior of his home. “ENJOY AND TAKE YOUR TIME!!!” You promptly walk into the kitchen and see him rush over to watch you and comment on your actions. You check out the stove. It’s… charred black. “WELL, YOU SEE, THAT’S A FUNNY STORY…” he says after you point it out. “MAYBE ONE DAY, I’LL TELL IT!”

Strangely enough, the sink was normal height. When he sees you checking it out, he says, “OH, I USED TO HAVE THIS REALLY TALL SINK, SO I COULD FIT ALL MY BONES UNDERNEATH IT! BUT… WELL, THIS ANNOYING DOG KEPT BREAKING IN AND STEALING THEM ALL! NOW I KEEP THEM HIDDEN IN A SECURE LOCATION! NOW ALL I KEEP UNDER THE SINK IS CLEANING STUFF.”

“AH-HA! INTERESTED IN MY FOOD MUSEUM?” he says as you move your attention over to the fridge. “PLEASE. PERUSE MY CULINARY ARTSHOW.” Sometimes, Papyrus’ intelligence is shocking, especially considering how most everybody sees him. He might be a bit naive, but he’s well educated and his vocabulary is surprisingly extensive. But still, the entire fridge is filled with containers labeled “spaghetti”. How unsurprising.

You move on to the trash can. “THAT’S THE TRASH CAN. FEEL FREE TO VISIT IT ANY TIME.” Finally having exhausted the kitchen of conversation topics, you move out into the main living room. You check the couch for loose change, but find nothing. Then you flip off the TV, finally stopping the bright colors flashing across the screen. You feel better at the very least.

You move upstairs and gaze inquisitively at the painting of the bone on a green background. “A CLASSIC IMAGE,” Papyrus says, admiring your choice in art. “IT ALWAYS REMINDS ME OF WHAT’S IMPORTANT IN LIFE.”

You finally make it to the door to Papyrus’ room. “THAT’S MY ROOM!” he exclaims. “IF YOU’VE FINISHED LOOKING AROUND… WE COULD GO IN AND… DO WHATEVER PEOPLE DO WHEN THEY DATE???” You nod, despite my laughter. Papyrus’ innocence is just too much sometimes, especially when he doesn’t quite know exactly what he’s insinuating. You go inside, and Papyrus follows you.

It’s the same old room as always, and it looks just the same as when you were in it less than an hour ago. You know, I’ve noticed something kinda weird about the Underground: time seems to move slower when we’re down here. I don’t know why, but our journey through takes only like six hours, but it feels like days upon days of walking and talking and trying not to die. It’s very strange. This date will take like ten minutes, tops, but it’ll feel like an hour.

That does not help our skewed view of time at all.

“SO, UM… IF YOU’VE SEEN EVERYTHING…” Papyrus says, and your attention snaps back from reality. So rude of him, to interrupt the ghost that he can’t see or hear and doesn’t know exists. “DO YOU WANT TO START THE DATE?”

Heck yes!

“OKAY!!! DATING START!!!” he cries out in joy, and you feel your SOUL be drawn out of your body for some reason. Maybe it’s because of the intimacy that’s implicit in dates. The room darkens and your focus fades to just Papyrus, which I suppose helps when it comes to concentrating. “HERE WE ARE!! ON OUR DATE!! I’VE ACTUALLY NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE. B-BUT DON’T WORRY!!! YOU CAN’T SPELL ‘PREPARED’ WITHOUT SEVERAL LETTERS FROM MY NAME!!!” Of course you can’t, Papyrus. “I- UH… WELL, I _HAD_ SNAGGED AN OFFICIAL DATING RULEBOOK FROM THE LIBRARY, BUT…” He chuckles a nervous “NYEH HEH HEH” under his breath. “WELL, THAT MEDDLING CANINE THAT PLAGUES MY LIFE STOLE THE BOOK! THAT MEANS… I HAVE NO CLUE HOW THIS ‘DATING’ THING IS SUPPOSED TO PROCEED! DO… DO YOU, HUMAN, KNOW HOW WE’RE SUPPOSED TO… DATE?”

You’re stunned. This is certainly a new turn of events. Everything else so far this run has basically resembled _something_ from the previous timelines, but the opportunity to determine how this date with Papyrus goes… you smile devilishly, but decide to follow the established course for now, and tell Papyrus that step one is to ask the other person on a date.

“OH! I CAN DO THAT! AHEM! HUMAN! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS… WILL GO ON A DTE WITH YOU!” You nod vigorously. “R-REALLY??? WOWIE!!!” He… blushes? I never really understood how he could do that. “I-I GUESS THAT MEANS WE’RE READY FOR PART THREE!” But I only said part one… “WHICH IS…” He waits expectantly for a response.

Now we have a dilemma: we either say the thing about the clothes and are probably forced to suffer through his spaghetti, or we take things off the rails and see where this goes. Now I have an idea for the next step that I think would be kinda funny. You see, we tell him that step two is to-

You tell Papyrus that the next step is to exchange deepest, darkest secrets with each other.

He stops dead where he stands, his skeletal smile disappearing from his face. Then, he begins to sweat, and he looks away from you nervously. “UH… WELL… C-COULD WE SKIP THAT STEP PLEASE? I-I DON’T THINK THAT TH-THAT’S NECESSARY, RIGHT?” I’m kinda forced to agree. You’re pressing him a little hard, aren’t you? He’s obviously hiding something, but it’s not super important that we know right now. I mean, everything’ll be revealed in the end, right? So why do you need to know now?

You tell him that it’s absolutely vital to the dating process to share secrets.

“W-WELL!” He resumes his smiling visage, but it’s obviously forced. “I-I GUESS I COULD TELL YOU A-A SECRET! D-DID YOU KNOW TH-THAT I HAVE A-AN INJURY THAT I G-GOT WHEN I WAS YOUNG THAT M-MAKES IT V-VERY DIFFICULTY TO SPEAK SOFTLY? I-IT’S A SERIOUS CONDITION!”

I could have guessed that myself, but it is a pretty good secret, don’t you think? Everyone else thought it was probably just Papyrus’ natural voice or he did it on purpose or something. It would explain a lot! You can just tell him something about how much you love spider pastries and we can move on past this!

You shake your head and tell him that it has to be his most important, deepest secret.

“W-WELL, I GUESS I HAVE _ONE_ THING. B-BUT YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT! I-IN FACT, Y-YOU WOULD HATE IT! AND MAYBE ME TOO!”

You ask him what it is.

“YOU- YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW SO BAD? W-WELL, I G-GUESS YOU HAVE THE RIGHT ANYWAY.” Before you have the opportunity to question that last sentence, he’s talking again. “B-BUT I CAN’T J-JUST _TELL_ YOU. I-I’M GOING TO HAVE TO _SHOW_ YOU.” He pulls a key from out of nowhere. You recognize it as the silver key from Sans’ room. How did Papyrus get it? “FOLLOW ME TO THE SECRET!” He leaves the room, expecting you to follow. Considering what he was holding at the time, you think you have a pretty decent idea of where he’s going.

You follow what seems to be the tail end of Papyrus’ cape outside and around his house, to the strange door hidden behind his house. I can’t help but wonder how Papyrus got his bony hands on Sans’ key. Did he find it while cleaning Sans’ room one day? And how did it relate to this secret of Papyrus’? Is it actually Sans’ secret? If he finds out we learned a secret of his… well, that doesn’t sound like it’d be fun for anyone. I don’t really want to know what it’d feel like to be thrown into the CORE, would you?

Papyrus is having trouble unlocking the door to the hidden lab. “HUMAN! IT APPEARS THAT THE LOCK HAS FROZEN SHUT! AND THERE IS NO OTHER WAY INTO THE ROOM BEYOND! SO… MAYBE YOU DON’T WANT TO LEARN MY SECRET?” Seeing your unenthused reaction, he swallows and continues. “UH… WHAT I MEANT TO SAY IS… WORRY NOT, HUMAN! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL SOLVE THIS CONUNDRUM! THEN WE CAN BOTH PROCEED! M-MEANWHILE, MAYBE YOU COULD CONSIDER… NOT WANTING TO KNOW MY SECRET?”

You know, for not wanting you to know his secret, he’s going through a lot of effort to make sure you do. Why? Because he’s nice and he trusts you. You’re probably not going to even say a real secret, are you?

You walk up to the door. Papyrus has left the key in the lock and is gazing intently at the door, as if trying to force it to reveal its secrets with his stare alone. You try to turn the key in the lock, to no avail. Maybe it really is stuck and we can just drop this whole topic now? Then you try to rotate it the other direction and it unlocks with a click. Papyrus looks flabbergasted.

“W-WELL, IF THE DOOR _IS_ OPEN, I GUESS WE SHOULD GO IN. N-NO POINT IN PUTTING THIS OFF, IF YOU _REALLY_ WANT TO KNOW. B-BUT _DO_ YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW? I-I MEAN, IF YOU’RE POSITIVE.”

Well, you still have no real clue as to what the secret is, so there’s no reason we _shouldn’t_ want to know. You nod and follow Papyrus down the staircase.

The lab is dark and empty of everything that’s usually in here. Blueprints, machine, even the cupboards are completely gone. In their place, shoved into the back of the lab where the covered machine usually is, is a curtain blocking the view of whatever lies behind it. It’s curious, but certainly not a big secret.

Papyrus coughs behind you, and you turn to face him. His gaze is downcast as he walks by you to stand by the curtain. “HUMAN. IT’S A FUNNY WORD, HUMAN. Y-YOU KNOW, YOU AREN’T THE FIRST HUMAN TO FALL DOWN HERE. Y-YOU’RE THE FIRST ONE I’VE EVER SEEN – ALL THE OTHERS WERE A LONG TIME AGO – BUT NOT THE FIRST EVER. M-MY BROTHER – SANS – H-HE SAYS THAT THE OTHER ONES WERE… WERE… *gulp* KILLED. BY MONSTERS, BY ACCIDENT, BY THEMSELVES… NONE OF THEM SURVIVED.”

None of this is new information, so you beckon for him to continue. “W-WELL, THE KING HAS MOST OF THE SOULS F-FROM THOSE HUMANS, B-BUT SANS… HE… MANAGED TO STEAL ONE.”

WHAT!? Sans _stole_ a human SOUL? When? Why? How? You express much the same feelings.

“WELL, I-I DON’T REALLY KNOW HOW, BUT IT WAS A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, SOON AFTER HE LEFT SNOWDIN. HE TOOK IT HERE AND… AND… WELL, HE MADE THIS WITH IT.” Slowly, hesitatingly, he pulls away the curtain to reveal a simple glass canister with a single glowing, blue heart-shaped object floating in the middle. A human SOUL.

“HE… HE SAID HE WAS GOING TO USE IT TO CREATE A MACHINE, A GENERATOR THAT COULD POWER THE WHOLE UNDERGROUND MUCH MORE EFFECTIVELY THAN THE CORE, BUT… WELL, HE’S ONLY USED IT TO POWER SNOWDIN SO FAR. BUT… HUMAN, SEEING THAT I HAVE A HUMAN SOUL IN MY BASEMENT, YOU… YOU MUST HATE ME NOW!” And with that, the Great Papyrus, captain of the Snowdin guard, broke down in tears.

You shush Papyrus and hold onto his leg, telling him that you don’t hate him, and that everything’s going to be alright. But your mind’s racing with possibilities right now. If Sans could get his hands on a human SOUL so easily, couldn’t he just take them all, go through the Barrier, and kill all of humanity? It would not be so simple. But then again… didn’t Sans say something earlier about not wanting to go to the surface?

Wait… if this new king had all of the human SOULs, why didn’t they just go up through the Barrier themselves to take all the human SOULs that the monsters needed to go through the Barrier? The king had to have some sort of ulterior motive for not doing that. Maybe the king thought the Underground was fine as it was, despite the overpopulation, the resource crisis, and all the news of rebellion and anarchy.

You tell Papyrus you don’t hate him, and you thank him for telling you all this. “Y-YOU’RE WELCOME, HUMAN! BUT… YOU SAID IT WAS AN EXCHANGE OF SECRETS. WHAT’S YOURS? IT CAN’T BE NEARLY SO BAD AS MINE.”

You open your mouth to lie but as you attempt to speak, your vocal cords stop working. I’m not sorry at all- I’m determined to tell the truth to Papyrus, even if it kills me. Again. Whatever. All I know is, I’m the one in control right now.

So I force you to say with your own mouth, “I hear the voice of a dead child in my head, and they… they whisper things to me.”

Papyrus looks taken aback. “WHAT… WHAT KIND OF THINGS?”

You’re beginning to wrest back control, but I still manage to speak. “Narration… advice… encouragement… and they need me… to guide them so… we can both be free. Maybe someday…” Before I can continue, you take back control of your own body and shiver.

“HUMAN, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

It’s nothing, you say. You’re just tired and messed up, you say. Inwardly, you’re terrified that I managed to take over.

“W-WELL, THAT IS QUITE A SECRET. DO YOU… DO YOU PROMISE NOT TO TELL ANYONE MINE?”

You promise.

“W-WELL! MAYBE WE SHOULD GET ON OUT OF HERE? THIS ROOM MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE.” You nod and he leads you up to the surface. Of the Underground. How ironic.

“I- I DON’T THINK WE SHOULD DO THIS ‘DATING’ THING AGAIN. I-I DON’T THINK THERE’S ANY REAL CHEMISTRY BETWEEN US. NOT- NOT THAT I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND OR ANYTHING! JUST… NO MORE DATING.” You agree. “I-I’LL SEE YOU AROUND, OK?” And with that, he runs off into Snowdin Forest dramatically, like he is to never to be seen again in this world.

Then he comes back after only being gone for like five seconds. “OH, AND IF YOU EVER NEED TO REACH ME… HERE’S MY PHONE NUMBER. YOU CAN CALL ME ANY TIME! AS LONG AS WE DON’T EVER TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN. WELL, GOTTA GO!” And off he goes again.

Well, that went… well? I don’t think that’s a decent word for this. But seriously… I can control you sometimes (you don’t have to shiver like that) and Sans stole at least one human SOUL. This is certainly a new development.

Come on, gotta get moving.

You walk through the aperture in the wall and traverse the narrow path shrouded by fog and cold mist. I can’t help but think as we travel down the path. What the hell is even going on? Why has nobody tried to go through the Barrier yet? Who in hell is this new king, and what are they planning? You pass beyond the edge of Snowdin and officially enter Waterfall, but the corridor you are in seems… dusty. As if this place has not been traversed in a long while. Or maybe monsters died here. Considering the whole “civil war” vibe the Underground has going on right now, that isn’t entirely out of the question.

This next room, where Sans, Monster Kid, and a weird fish-thing that likes to explain echo flowers usually are, is also completely empty, devoid even of Sans’ usual station. You instead walk over to the shimmering form of the echo flower, faintly glowing a light blue color in the pale luminescence of Waterfall. You reach out a hand to brush against it, but the noises relayed by the flower are… confused. You can’t even hear the familiar sounds of Waterfall (dripping water and flowing streams) over the noise of screams and banging and chaos. You shrug, but continue on. Not much you can do about the echo flower anyways.

Hey, isn’t there supposed to be a SAVE point here?

But before you can leave the room, you feel something lightly come to a rest on your shoulder, firmly holding you in place but without hurting you. Your breath catches, but you can’t bring yourself to turn around. Then, before you can do anything, you hear that faint, familiar chuckle that has plagued you for too long.

“Heya, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... it's been a while.
> 
> I felt really bad about leaving things where they were, but life got in the way. I had to get a new job, classes picked up and got really intense, a very close friend of mine passed away...
> 
> Actually, it was that one friend who sorta inspired me to start this thing anyway. She enjoyed Undertale, though she wasn't as "in the fandom" as I am. Was. Whatever. She also was the first person to get me into anime, which I supposed I'm grateful for. But all-in-all, though she likely never read this herself, it was at her urging that I started this story, and in her memory I continue it.
> 
> So I'm sorry it took so long to get back to this. I can't really offer any excuses, but I can say that I still love this story and want to bring it to its final conclusion. I'm not quite as invested as I previously was, as it has been months since I looked at this, but rereading this for the first time in a while has got me inspired to start again.
> 
> So, yeah. That's all I really have to say. Well, except for stuff about the chapter, but y'all could just ask me in the comments if you want to hear my input. I wrote this a while ago, though I did change the "date" scene a bit. My original plan was a bit too unbelievable, even considering the story.
> 
> So, that's all. See you next time.


End file.
